hello. does anyone know if anet is planning to do anything for the guardians? feel like first half of the games life was spent nerfing us. aaaaaand then they havent touched us since really.
half our utilitys suck and are kinda useless. 2 of our trait lines are kinda useless. 3 some say even. a lot of our utilitys kinda suck aswell. i mean. a 4sec freeze on 50sec cooldown? really? xD
aaaaaand were kinda forced to play meditation or shout build. NOTHING else is viable.
Well the reason for this is that compared to other classes, the guardian is one of the most well rounded and viable classes in the game, so it’s at the bottom of the priority pile when it comes to fixes.
To be honest I can’t see that changing any time soon, so the best we can hope for is small tweaks and the occasional fix. ( such as the Scepter auto-attack speed increase for instance, that has been promised in a “future update” )
Let’s just hope they leave us alone XD After the amount of kitten I’ve gone through with the ranger class, I can honestly say I’m happy with my guardian atm
Grandmaster Forum Mind Brain
|-Swiftpaw Sharpclaw [DnT]-|
but but. we got 2 builds :O hows that a lot of builds :O
Yeh the limited builds of all classes are annoying.. but imagine you have only 1 build.. or in the case of ranger.. no viable dungeon build that brings you up to par with any other class. I like to just pretend we’re invisible and hope Anet will leave us alone.
Grandmaster Forum Mind Brain
|-Swiftpaw Sharpclaw [DnT]-|
they are no warr. but hey none of us are. never had any problems with my ranger in dungeons
Of course they are no warrior , they are no any class. They don’t really have a needed role. They are fine in dungeons, but when it comes down to maximizing efficiency, you will be hard pressed to do so with ranger. It is a funner class than guardian in my opinion, just not as useful
Grandmaster Forum Mind Brain
|-Swiftpaw Sharpclaw [DnT]-|
well its because of warrs making the life hard for the rest of us! i kinda agree tho. as a ranger. if someone have the choise between us or a warr. ppl will pick warr 99times out of 99times XDD
well its because of warrs making the life hard for the rest of us! i kinda agree tho. as a ranger. if someone have the choise between us or a warr. ppl will pick warr 99times out of 99times XDD
Some people are just kittenholes XD
It’s understandable for when they want to do COF P1 farm or fotm 50+ and they are maxing out for time efficiency, but I think ranger shouldn’t be discriminated against in most other dungeons.
Grandmaster Forum Mind Brain
|-Swiftpaw Sharpclaw [DnT]-|
Hopefully they will adjust Spirit Weapons. It’s stupid that they have a health bar AND on top of that only about 20 sec duartion. Imo it’s quite unnecessary to have them both… The traits also need to be reworked.
I don’t expect any significant changes (except the scepter speed buff, maybe). Obviously, the devs have stopped working on the guardian altogether, so most of our problems will probably be ignored for a long, long time.
Warning! This post may contain traces of irony, sarcasm and peanuts.
Nerfing wars is pointless. They might have more raw power and better DPS but all in all they have problems like the rest of us.
I am really hoping for a scepter fix which in my case is removing it. I just don’t like the flavor. I’m not talking about making guardians OP in ranged – they shouldnt be – but branch in main hand is not guardian-ish, rather rainbow-fairy. I dunno, a crossbow? Maybe rifle with some shotgun-like attacks, lots of cone dmg with conditions I dunno…
I just don’t want my HEAVY armored guardian to wield a branch. I’m not an elf. This wep is good for casters not for frontliners.
honestly my problem with guardian is atm. were great at support or bunker and thats fine. but going more to the dmg site just isnt viable. and it would be soooo easy to fix . fix some of our utilitys and some of our traits both minor and major in zeal and radiance.
The developers stated that in the patch at the end of June, every trait line of every profession will see at least one change, with some seeing as many kitten at current count.
I wouldn’t expect to see a slew of guardian changes in the next few months. Guardians are pretty good compared to most other professions in terms of useable weapons, traits and trait lines, and utility skills. All the weapons are seeing use – even torch, all the shouts are good, most of the consecrations and meditations are good. Virtues and Zeal trait lines need improvements, but at least 30 points in Virtues sees play in PvP.
honestly my problem with guardian is atm. were great at support or bunker and thats fine. but going more to the dmg site just isnt viable. and it would be soooo easy to fix . fix some of our utilitys and some of our traits both minor and major in zeal and radiance.
Damage works pretty fine in PvE and WvW. No idea from PvP since I don’t play it a lot, but it also seems to be ok when I look at Silven’s guide or other PvP stuff.
Warning! This post may contain traces of irony, sarcasm and peanuts.
honestly my problem with guardian is atm. were great at support or bunker and thats fine. but going more to the dmg site just isnt viable. and it would be soooo easy to fix . fix some of our utilitys and some of our traits both minor and major in zeal and radiance.
Really? Damage builds are more than viable on Guardian; it’s simply a player capability issue. You actually have to learn how to play a damage build on a Guardian, unlike other classes. In fact, the biggest “problem” is that we have a great offensive capability WITHOUT Zeal traited. Why is that bad? Because if they do make Zeal more appealing as a trait, I can already see the trainwreck of nerfs incoming from that.
Personally, I don’t see a need for any major changes to the class. It does it all.
I do miss spirit weapons being unkillable. Used to run a spirit weapon build til they changed them, now using a shout build. They should either make them unkillable again or remove the timer from them and let them remain out until they get destroyed. Aside from that, I don’t really want anything changed. I’m afraid they’d destroy our viable builds in an attempt to balance things out. that’s typically what they’ve done with the other classes I play. Rather than buff the useless things, they bring down the useful ones to the same level of suck as the useless ones. So i’d prefer they not touch anything at all since they don’t know what they’re doing most of the time.
honestly my problem with guardian is atm. were great at support or bunker and thats fine. but going more to the dmg site just isnt viable. and it would be soooo easy to fix . fix some of our utilitys and some of our traits both minor and major in zeal and radiance.
Really? Damage builds are more than viable on Guardian; it’s simply a player capability issue. You actually have to learn how to play a damage build on a Guardian, unlike other classes. In fact, the biggest “problem” is that we have a great offensive capability WITHOUT Zeal traited. Why is that bad? Because if they do make Zeal more appealing as a trait, I can already see the trainwreck of nerfs incoming from that.
Personally, I don’t see a need for any major changes to the class. It does it all.
Guardians can come up with damage that allows them to compete, but their damage sucks compared to other classes. If you stick a full group of zerker guardians in COF1 and a full group of Zerker Warriors in COF1, the warriors are probably going to finish twice or three times faster.
honestly my problem with guardian is atm. were great at support or bunker and thats fine. but going more to the dmg site just isnt viable. and it would be soooo easy to fix . fix some of our utilitys and some of our traits both minor and major in zeal and radiance.
Really? Damage builds are more than viable on Guardian; it’s simply a player capability issue. You actually have to learn how to play a damage build on a Guardian, unlike other classes. In fact, the biggest “problem” is that we have a great offensive capability WITHOUT Zeal traited. Why is that bad? Because if they do make Zeal more appealing as a trait, I can already see the trainwreck of nerfs incoming from that.
Personally, I don’t see a need for any major changes to the class. It does it all.
Guardians can come up with damage that allows them to compete, but their damage sucks compared to other classes. Nobody wants a guardian around for their damage. If you stick a full group of zerker guardians in COF1 and a full group of Zerker Warriors in COF1, the warriors are probably going to finish 2 or 3 times faster.
Guardians can come up with damage that allows them to compete, but their damage sucks compared to other classes. Nobody wants a guardian around for their damage. If you stick a full group of zerker guardians in COF1 and a full group of Zerker Warriors in COF1, the warriors are probably going to finish 2 or 3 times faster.
Your first sentence doesn’t make sense. If their damage sucks, they CAN’T compete, so it’s a contradiction. I don’t think Guardian’s having Suck damage compared to other classes is very relevant or is very true anyways.
The people that don’t want Guardians around for their damage are simply ignorant of the profession’s capabilities. That doesn’t necessarily justify the need for any changes related to damage like Zeal.
Don’t get me wrong, some more tasty flavour would be nice by changing Zeal a bit but it wouldn’t be done because Guardians lack damage.
Guardians can come up with damage that allows them to compete, but their damage sucks compared to other classes. Nobody wants a guardian around for their damage. If you stick a full group of zerker guardians in COF1 and a full group of Zerker Warriors in COF1, the warriors are probably going to finish 2 or 3 times faster.
Your first sentence doesn’t make sense. If their damage sucks, they CAN’T compete, so it’s a contradiction. I don’t think Guardian’s having Suck damage compared to other classes is very relevant or is very true anyways.
The people that don’t want Guardians around for their damage are simply ignorant of the profession’s capabilities. That doesn’t necessarily justify the need for any changes related to damage like Zeal.
Don’t get me wrong, some more tasty flavour would be nice by changing Zeal a bit but it wouldn’t be done because Guardians lack damage.
I can see how you would interpret it that way. You can compete well against someone and still be outmatched by them, and that is what I meant. If you tune your guardian build for max damage, you’ll do okay damage, but you won’t come near what most other classes are capable of.
Regardless of your opinion of those people, nobody looks for a guardian for damage. If they want to wreck CoF, they get warriors. The zeal tree is weak compared to the other trees. Any tree can be used effectively, but even players that go out of the box and run zeal builds admit that it is weak compared to the other trees.
I agree with you on the damage from the zeal line though. I’d prefer more utility to be added than any form of direct damage. Maybe some CC attached to symbols or something. An immobilize would be OP, but having all symbols cripple and or weaken could work.
Hmmm, now that may be an interesting way of making the Zeal trait line more useful. Tweak our symbols. Most of them don’t really do much and are only really good for combo fields. Having them get abilities in zeal that would add more damage, or make all symbols cause burning or cripple or something like that. It would definitely be fun to play around with some sort of nuking symbol build with massive CC abilities.
If you tune your guardian build for max damage, you’ll do okay damage, but you won’t come near what most other classes are capable of.
If you build properly guardians has one of the fastest, hardest to avoid and highest bursts in the game. Just saying.
We dont need more damage, what we need is more utility in zeal that make the traits worth as much as as traits in other lines, and it doesnt have to increase our damage, tbh i would prefer survivability stuff in zeal, like zealots blade healing no matter what weapon you use.
If you tune your guardian build for max damage, you’ll do okay damage, but you won’t come near what most other classes are capable of.
If you build properly guardians has one of the fastest, hardest to avoid and highest bursts in the game. Just saying.
We dont need more damage, what we need is more utility in zeal that make the traits worth as much as as traits in other lines, and it doesnt have to increase our damage, tbh i would prefer survivability stuff in zeal, like zealots blade healing no matter what weapon you use.
This, definitely. Zeal’s utility is subpar compared to the other traitlines, without enough sheer damage output to compensate (and increasing damage output can only compensate so much). I get nearly as much bonus damage from going 25 into Virtues as I do going that far into Zeal, and I get far more utility for both myself and my team as a side benefit.
That being said, I run 0/15/0/30/25. That’s by no means an “aggressive” build, damage-wise. I run Celestial trinkets, Knight’s head/chest/legs, and the only ‘zerker equipment I have is my weapons and shoulders/gloves/boots. Again, that’s by no means an “aggressive” equipment set. I run shout utilities, which deal no damage. With this relatively defensive/support-based setup, I have no problem whatsoever laying down a 15k damage burst, not including burning! With Judge’s Intervention, Smite Condition, crit damage from Valor, damage boosts from Zeal and Radiance, and more aggressive gear, I would consider bursts of 20-25k to be perfectly reasonable (and even a bit on the low side)—plus, you’re mobile while bursting (and can even teleport while doing so).
hello. does anyone know if anet is planning to do anything for the guardians? feel like first half of the games life was spent nerfing us. aaaaaand then they havent touched us since really.
half our utilitys suck and are kinda useless. 2 of our trait lines are kinda useless. 3 some say even. a lot of our utilitys kinda suck aswell. i mean. a 4sec freeze on 50sec cooldown? really? xD
aaaaaand were kinda forced to play meditation or shout build. NOTHING else is viable.
Well we border on too good atm. So I’m thinking they don’t want to tip over that scale. Or start heading the other way, which would cause omega rage here. I hope something comes soon you can theory craft old news but so long.
They’re trying to break the current meta-build wall that blocks any sort of viable alternative builds. For clarity, there’s only 2 builds that are very effective in most classes, and I don’t think the devs like that. They want to see more, and I’m sure most of the other players that want to use alternative builds would agree.
Here’s the problem though, and I think it’s going cause the rage Silentstorm mentioned, they’re going to have to break current builds to do it. That means nerfing and buffing at the same time. When people get used to a build they like you can be sure change is going to upset them.
I’m using an alternative build right now myself, but I can go ahead and tell you it’s not the most effective. However, I thoroughly enjoy it. I’d love to see some changes that would make it more effective, but I’m also very worried they’re going to break something in the build along with the attempt to fix the problem.
I was never a long in the cookie cutter band wagon. You can use whatever you like in this game and be affective. I prove that all the time got vids to prove it. The problem may not be the game it maybe the mentality of min max. I don’t think any game will ever find a way to make gamers not think like that.
In some of the Dungeons and Dragons DM guides, they talk about player types. They mention that player has a portion of min/maxer in them (the power gamer min/max, the social butterfly min/max, the non-combatant min/max etc)
I think Anet is going in a very right direction with what they’re planning. I’d like to see less posts of Zerker for everything all the time in PvE.
Also, considering every trait line is probably getting anywhere from 1-5 changes, I think we’ll see a lot of new builds crop up to compete., which is a win for me
I agree with you on the damage from the zeal line though. I’d prefer more utility to be added than any form of direct damage. Maybe some CC attached to symbols or something. An immobilize would be OP, but having all symbols cripple and or weaken could work.
I don’t think symbols should take up anywhere near the amount of traits they do in the zeal line…especially considering that over half of guardian weapons do not have access to symbols. It just makes zeal a trait line to avoid for any guardian that dares not to use one of the 3 to 4 weapons that do have access to symbols. 1h sword, torch, focus, scepter, shield…none of these weapons have access to a symbol. If anything…the symbol traits need to be consolidated and moved to a major trait slot..instead of occupying the mandatory minor trait slots in zeal. I’d even say some of the symbol boosters need to be baseline for the guardian class.
I also disagree on the point of zeal not needing to provide more raw damage. If someone wants to focus on damage on a guardian…why prevent that? I don’t see the logic in limiting the class to weak damage if they forsake the heavy survival trait lines, in favor of the power and precision trait lines. It may seem cool for flavor purposes, but in the end…its just an unnecessary limitation on the class. The prevailing theme of this game’s design seems to be freedom to build and play the way you want…an artificial flavor limitation like that seems to be the opposite direction in my opinion.
In some of the Dungeons and Dragons DM guides, they talk about player types. They mention that player has a portion of min/maxer in them (the power gamer min/max, the social butterfly min/max, the non-combatant min/max etc)
I think Anet is going in a very right direction with what they’re planning. I’d like to see less posts of Zerker for everything all the time in PvE.
Also, considering every trait line is probably getting anywhere from 1-5 changes, I think we’ll see a lot of new builds crop up to compete., which is a win for me
There is a fundamental reason why “Zerker” is the preferred build type in pve. The reason is that killing stuff fast gets stuff done quicker. People will naturally follow the path of least resistance. If it takes less time..then that is the way to go. More time available either do it again or go do something else. That has been a constant in mmo gaming for as long as mmos have existed…extremely unlikely to change. The only thing that could be done to change that would be to make the encounters so difficult that everyone has to resort to a bunker build to complete them. I’m fairly certain that would then lead to a high amount of player dissatisfaction…especially since this is a casual game for the part.
I also disagree on the point of zeal not needing to provide more raw damage. If someone wants to focus on damage on a guardian…why prevent that? I don’t see the logic in limiting the class to weak damage if they forsake the heavy survival trait lines, in favor of the power and precision trait lines. It may seem cool for flavor purposes, but in the end…its just an unnecessary limitation on the class. The prevailing theme of this game’s design seems to be freedom to build and play the way you want…an artificial flavor limitation like that seems to be the opposite direction in my opinion.
The problem with more damage in zeal is simple: Guardians can already deal considerable amounts of damage with the right build and don’t need to hide behind other classes (except the warriors, but they are on their own level). At the same time, we still retain quite a lot of defensive abilities and support. So, if the damage is increased, chances are quite high that it will cost us dearly at another position. That’s something many people (including myself) don’t want.
Warning! This post may contain traces of irony, sarcasm and peanuts.
Most of the difference between guardian damage and the top damage dealers is because Zeal isn’t good. Most damage builds take 20 points in the healing tree because of empowering might, but you still gain 2k HP and some other survival trait even though you’re really just trying to maximize your damage.
There needs to be a max damage no survivability option. Guardian already pays for the default survival tools by having low HP and limited ranged damage options.
I do hope there are some changes to this profession. It’s too reliant on party members to bring out its full potential (which is fine). I just want more self sufficiency. Also, the traits are pretty bad when compared to some other professions.
Most of the difference between guardian damage and the top damage dealers is because Zeal isn’t good.
Many people with many thousands of hours of Guardian experience posting IN this thread have already killed that myth. Zeal has a very minor significance in that difference with the right player behind the keyboard.
I think a more accurate assessment is that it’s much more difficult to achieve the damage levels of top damage dealers as a Guardian and having a more ‘punchy’ Zeal line would help but it’s important to be really careful about why it’s more difficult.
I’m very aware of where guardian damage comes from. The problem is that in order to pick up the traits that actually provide damage, you have to invest heavily in the radiance line which is tailored for 1h sword, and other than Fiery Wrath, the Zeal line provides essentially nothing.
Alternatively, you can take a GS, which is a superior damage weapon, and dump points in Radiance grabbing two mostly useless traits to get to the 25 point trait.
The fact that no weapon setup can really make use of a 30/30/x build is why most dps builds end up grabbing empowering might, even though the stats that lead to it contribute nothing to your damage.
I agree there isn’t much appeal in Zeal and that does warrant an examination of the line. I don’t find arguments appealing to specific weapon/traiting for good damage to be relevant; it’s hard to be sympathetic to those arguments given our current performance.
My view of the problem is that we don’t need the Zeal line to have competitive damage so there is little concern to fix it other than the semantics of have more diversity in builds.
I think there is something worth repeating here:
I don’t think we can deny that improvements to Zeal will likely lead OPed Guardian setups, primarily in PVE. If that happens, count on getting unwanted attention.
I think that a pure DPS build without permanent vigor and under 11k HP will be squishy enough to not be overpowered.
That said, I feel like the effectiveness of the class is fine where it is, but the options for getting the most effective setup are limited and not very interesting.
The reality is that they can make the traits work better together and open up more options for how to play without increasing how effective the class is.
I think that a pure DPS build without permanent vigor and under 11k HP will be squishy enough to not be overpowered.
And that’s completely irrelevant since you could invest everything in Zeal and Radiance and have still enough points to go for perma-vigor. The little health difference does not matter since you have to rely on damage avoidance with all DPS builds.
Warning! This post may contain traces of irony, sarcasm and peanuts.
Except for 2/3 game types where you are going to get hit with some regularity.
I wouldn’t actually use such a setup, but the class needs to have an all damage, no survival option so we can actually make interesting choices for builds.
There are about 20 major traits that are actually interesting, and if you removed the restrictions tying traits to trees and tiers, I’d wager 95% of all builds would only use those 20.
It’s not a crippling problem, because we are able to put together some decent builds, but it is a problem.
I wouldn’t actually use such a setup, but the class needs to have an all damage, no survival option so we can actually make interesting choices for builds.
I don’t believe that can happen to a significant extent because everything a highly skilled Guardian needs for survival isn’t related to traits. Sure, traits make those things better but fram my experience, few good Guardians have little problem playing an all-damage build in PVE and surviving with just my #6, my F2, my F3, my utilities, my dodges, and whatever boons I get from weapons and my teammates. The deviations from those builds are for the benefits of the team and usually not the Guardian themselves.
How much damage you do isn’t just about your trait choices. It really has much to do with player capability. It’s why I think that improvement to Zeal will end up a zero sum game for us.
