After playing 4 different classes I figured though that guardian and engineers elite skills are much less useful then all other classes.
In guardian proportion.
Most of guardians use renewed focus because it is least cool down skill and it get you out of bad situations instead of putting you into one. This skill dose work well ounly if you have AH and enspire virtue other without these traits it is as useful as warriors endure pain and elementalists mist form.
And this skill dose not make you invulnerable because condition damage still ticks.
Yes I understand that virtue recharge is very good for your party survival but once again only when you are properly trained.
To improve renewed focus they really need to make us invulnerable to all damage. Or remove few conditions.
TOMES: they are bad that’s all I have to say!
Why: because if you in wvw you are way too exposed when you have your tome up. In addition the damage/healing that is done by skills are worthless. To fully heal party of 5 you have to wait 5 seconds and by that time they are dead.
These skills can be used in a large WvW Zerg (still you are exposed) but otherwise these skill are 100 % useles.
I know they will not change a thing because of my post that’s nothing but complaining but. I really whant to see how many people agree with me!
Tome of Courage is one of my favorite things in WvW, here are 2 videos I threw together recently doing a healing build with the elite focus trait to get a 30 second tome of courage.. about to make a mini guide to playing this style.. most of my videos are dps greatsword/hammer with no healing power on gear but still using tome of courage on cooldown.
Solo(and when you can duck underwater in group) Renewed Focus is simply amazing, especially with 30 in virtues to reset the stability and condition removal with virtue traits, if timed right it will win fights, just like tome of courage.
I love, love, LOVE tome of wrath in WvW. It’s an amazing high damage skill that the Guardian doesn’t really have a lot of. Yes, the tomes do leave you a bit exposed during their use, but the spammable #1 ability of both make it an excellent burst damage/heal ability that can really have a huge influence during a battle.
I switch between Tome of Wrath and Renewed Focus constantly. Love them both, since they have lots of different uses in different scenarios.
I don’t run a non-AH build because they’re inferior, ’nuff said.
This is absolute nonsense.
Regarding the OP’s question, I mostly run with RF (since they took away stability from ToC) and though it is not completely bad, I’d still like to see some improvements. Right now, it simply does not feel like an elite skill, but just like another generic utility, especially compared to a warrior’s Endure Pain. If ANet allowed us to attack under the effect of RF, I’d already be happy.
Warning! This post may contain traces of irony, sarcasm and peanuts.
After playing 4 different classes I figured though that guardian and engineers elite skills are much less useful then all other classes.
In guardian proportion.
I don’t agree about engineer, supply drop rocks. But the others are useless.
Most of guardians use renewed focus because it is least cool down skill and it get you out of bad situations instead of putting you into one. This skill dose work well ounly if you have AH and enspire virtue other without these traits it is as useful as warriors endure pain and elementalists mist form.
You are right, but I prefer to look at it as us getting endure pain or mist form without taking up a utility slot. Because endure pain and mist form are awesome, and having them without losing a good utility is even better (even if unlike endure pain and mist form we can’t use other abilities, which is unfortunate).
Although I wish it gave the full 3 of invulnerability the tool tip says, rather than the 2 seconds it actually gives.
Not a huge fan of tomes personally, too long of recast and they don’t seem to do enough to make up for it especially with the long cast times. But that is just my experience/opinion.
Also why didn’t our quickness get a duration buff like everyone else when they lowered quickness?
I enjoy running tome of wrath… full retaliation duration at least HELPS compensate for being vulnerable (of course it won’t save you against a mob) and the ability to give fury/quickness to allies is nice for small group fights. Also, 5 stacks of might with 10s duration every 5s (which can be applied 3 times w/o elite focus trait) is not bad for allies either. Conflagrate actually deals respectable damage in an AoE along with burning (AoE is something we lack, so that can be nice).
Tome of Courage can also be good, though I use it less often personally so I have less to say about it for WvW/PvP. In PvE though it’s friggin’ amazing. It grants +50% toughness/vitality AND protection. For my AH/EM knight/berserker guardian gives me 3800 armor AND -33% damage for 20s. Compared to a reference armor of scholars (1836) that’s the equivalent of 68% damage reduction for those 20s… that’s god like in GW2 terms.
As far as renewed focus – I prefer to use it as a backup. If I’m not doing well, I’ll blow all three virtues at once and activate RF right after. I like it less than the tomes, but I still use it in sPvP most of the time simple because 3s of invulnerability can be helpful. I wish we could use healing during the invulnerability time (like Eles in mist form can).
Tomes are a nice idea, but the fact you lose your other abilities (including heal) means you just get pasted in seconds.
Also they are too short to be of any real use unless traited.
renewed focus is underwhelming unless traited, but at least its consistently useful
Renewed Focus is just pure gold. It can be used all the time and there’d be no problem. Solo, grouped, or zerged, its all good.
The tomes need some love, but they are also good situationally. They are good when grouped with a lot of people. But they aren’t that great when it comes to solo play.
I’d personally like to see a nerf to the tomes in favor of a decreased CD.
Renewed focus is ok to great depending on the situation. I have only dabbled in tomes, but they don’t seem that great other than the healing potential of the tome of courage in larger groups.
Renewed Focus is amazing if timed right with shouts to clear conditions before popping RF while channeling RF you can use your virtues and once again when RF is done channeling you can use virtues again not to mention you block all in coming damage while channeling so to me i love the skill. I also have a lvl 80 Engi and there elite Supply drop is a great way to stun and apply more damage both skills for Guard and Engi need to be timed correctly for the best result.
Renewed Focus is great, quick cooldown lots of versatility and does a great job of saving my life on numerous occasions.
As for the tomes: I think wrath is underrated. It provides strong damage and damage support and gives a guardian decent range aoe damage that is very helpful in WvW during keep defense/seige. My only gripe with it, is that it has way too long of a cooldown. As for Courage, it is very powerful under some circumstances, but I find it lacking as an Oh crap! button since it takes a very long time to cast and get its big heal off.
Renewed Focus is great, quick cooldown lots of versatility and does a great job of saving my life on numerous occasions.
As for the tomes: I think wrath is underrated. It provides strong damage and damage support and gives a guardian decent range aoe damage that is very helpful in WvW during keep defense/seige. My only gripe with it, is that it has way too long of a cooldown. As for Courage, it is very powerful under some circumstances, but I find it lacking as an Oh crap! button since it takes a very long time to cast and get its big heal off.
Staff ele’s regular weapon skills completely outshine everything our elite does. 1 meteor storm is more damage over a larger area and is 10x safer and takes a fraction of the time to use compared to spamming 5-6 tome attacks.
Courage fairs a little better, though not much better than blast finishers, but stopping everything to heal people once every 3 minutes is not the kind of effect I really want to bring along to a long fight (RF gives you an extra instant 2500 heal + regen + protection)…. maybe if it could revive instead it would be worth it.
It takes a very “special” kind of person to claim guardian elites are useless…
A very, very “special” kind…
I wanna point out just how baffling that statement is, but I honestly don’t know where to start. Let’s just go with “The doctor prescribes a liberal dose of L2P, at least twice a day – but really consume liberally” and let’s all reunite and re-discuss this topic, if need be, once everyone has had their much needed meds.
If anyone has any specific questions I’ll be glad to answer them. “Guardian elites are useless” is simply too stupid a claim to debate. If you want useless elites try Warrior: You have 1 elite – Signet of Rage. Everything else is a joke gone a bit too far.
Meh all elites are meh. I was seriously let down by all of them as they won’t really save you if your in real trouble. The only one I found to be best is Hounds of Balthazar.
Are you kidding me? Guardians have some of the best elite skills out of any class!
- one who has played both thief, ele, and war well enough to know what constitutes kittenty elites
After playing 4 different classes I figured though that guardian and engineers elite skills are much less useful then all other classes.
In guardian proportion.
Most of guardians use renewed focus because it is least cool down skill and it get you out of bad situations instead of putting you into one. This skill dose work well ounly if you have AH and enspire virtue other without these traits it is as useful as warriors endure pain and elementalists mist form.
And this skill dose not make you invulnerable because condition damage still ticks.
Yes I understand that virtue recharge is very good for your party survival but once again only when you are properly trained.
To improve renewed focus they really need to make us invulnerable to all damage. Or remove few conditions.
TOMES: they are bad that’s all I have to say!
Why: because if you in wvw you are way too exposed when you have your tome up. In addition the damage/healing that is done by skills are worthless. To fully heal party of 5 you have to wait 5 seconds and by that time they are dead.
These skills can be used in a large WvW Zerg (still you are exposed) but otherwise these skill are 100 % useles.
I know they will not change a thing because of my post that’s nothing but complaining but. I really whant to see how many people agree with me!
I like renewned focused. Combining it with the massive amount of blocks/blinds/ and other invulns guardians are capable of, you can pretty much avoid most damage done to you for a fair amount of time.
Yeh renewed focus doesn’t remove conditions, but if your guardian is having problems with conditions you are doing it wrong. Overall you’ve failed to do research, because if you did, you’d know that you can make renewed focus remove not " a few conditions" but all conditions if you want to go that route with your gear.
I’m annoyed by the title “elite skills” because they are not very special on any class. Minus perhaps the mesmer time warp.
But I run renewed focus all the time and find it pretty useful.
Yeh, it’s like someone high up in Anet management is a mesmer fan or something. Their elite, among other things, outclasses every other elite in the game by far. With a few mesmers in a zerg, their elite can make or break a siege.
After playing 4 different classes I figured though that guardian and engineers elite skills are much less useful then all other classes.
In guardian proportion.
Most of guardians use renewed focus because it is least cool down skill and it get you out of bad situations instead of putting you into one. This skill dose work well ounly if you have AH and enspire virtue other without these traits it is as useful as warriors endure pain and elementalists mist form.
And this skill dose not make you invulnerable because condition damage still ticks.
Yes I understand that virtue recharge is very good for your party survival but once again only when you are properly trained.
To improve renewed focus they really need to make us invulnerable to all damage. Or remove few conditions.
TOMES: they are bad that’s all I have to say!
Why: because if you in wvw you are way too exposed when you have your tome up. In addition the damage/healing that is done by skills are worthless. To fully heal party of 5 you have to wait 5 seconds and by that time they are dead.
These skills can be used in a large WvW Zerg (still you are exposed) but otherwise these skill are 100 % useles.
I know they will not change a thing because of my post that’s nothing but complaining but. I really whant to see how many people agree with me!
I like renewned focused. Combining it with the massive amount of blocks/blinds/ and other invulns guardians are capable of, you can pretty much avoid most damage done to you for a fair amount of time.
Yeh renewed focus doesn’t remove conditions, but if your guardian is having problems with conditions you are doing it wrong. Overall you’ve failed to do research, because if you did, you’d know that you can make renewed focus remove not " a few conditions" but all conditions if you want to go that route with your gear.
I’m annoyed by the title “elite skills” because they are not very special on any class. Minus perhaps the mesmer time warp.
But I run renewed focus all the time and find it pretty useful.
Yeh, it’s like someone high up in Anet management is a mesmer fan or something. Their elite, among other things, outclasses every other elite in the game by far. With a few mesmers in a zerg, their elite can make or break a siege.
I know that runes of Lyssa can make you remove all conditions but these runes are not that useful in combat beyond using it for elite skill other classes can benefit allot more then guardians
I can hit anywhere from 3k’ish on heavily armored target to up to 6k on glass cannons/uplevels.
Since the quickness nerf I have NEVER used this skill outside of a group fight, but believe me it makes a big difference in say 5v5’s. Taking away a third of every enemy’s health + 2 second knockdown is pretty huge in my book.
Don’t forget the massive stacks of might and fury you can give, along with the burning weakness and cripple.
I run a full Mediation because AH builds are inferior unless using a Staff or Pve’n…
AH build inferior to a meditation build…right you keep telling yourself that
Different playstyles bro. Meditation is super sick if you’re playing an offensive playstyle, while AH is more for group supporty-shout builds.
Guardian elites aren’t as bad as the OP claims they are. Granted I use Tome of Courage for dungeons mostly, but in pvp Renewed Focus is amazing no matter what your build is just because it’s 3 seconds of invulnerability that gives you all your virtues back. What more can you ask for?
I know that runes of Lyssa can make you remove all conditions but these runes are not that useful in combat beyond using it for elite skill other classes can benefit allot more then guardians
So wait…
160+ Precision is useless.
10% Burning Damage is useless….
A random boon every time you cast your Heal is useless….
You sound like a really, really….. really really really bad player…..
