Guild Wars 2

Hey Colin,

I would like to see Anet address the insane particle effects.

I can never anticipate when to dodge the statue of dwayna attacks because of this. You can barely make out the enemy model. Particle effects are nice and all, but in gw2 they are overly done. I don’t think I’ve ever seen this issue in any mmorpg I’ve played.

Congrats Blackgate players!

It seems like this will make doing bosses overly complex. At this time, every reset we do a world event train. This will no longer be possible. Meaning the amount of loot earned is drastically lowered.

I personally do not like the change.

I’ve seen players mention on several occasions that gw2 is a very fast paced game. I agree with this to a extent. Unlike gw1 which were the max cooldown to skills were 60secs. Gw2 gives us the traditional mmorpg approach with “powerful skills and long cooldowns”.

Because of this, gw1 gameplay actually feels more fluid, since there isn’t a long interval between rotating skill cooldowns. To make matters worse, many of the skills with the longest cooldowns tend to be the least powerful.

In the future, I hope the devs get rid of the long cooldown approach and build upon the original formula. Were skills were on short cds and elites weren’t super powerful skills but skills that you formed your build around.

1. Take as many passives as you can.
2. Take as many AI skills you can.
3. Spam every skill you have off CD, even if you don’t need it.
4. Dodge even when no one is there attacking.
5. Spam aoe with team mates, pretending like you are assisting even though you are hitting another guy next to the guy targeted.

Win

Evan Lesh.3295:

At what point are you seeing players join teams from spectator mode? Rewards are based on time played on a team, so are people forgoing partial rewards to be on the winning team?

This is not the problem.

The problem is players not wanting to lose. So they switch teams or try..not matter what the rewards are. Here is a typical example of what goes on in hotjoin:

• Everyone is new to the server, match starts and its 5v5

• In the first 2mins blue obliterates red on center point then proceed to take other points

• Two people from red quit, one goes to spectator

• Auto balance happens and some one from blue goes to red, then the guy who quit red goes to blue

• The original blue player doesn’t like being switched so he goes to spectator, its 3v5 again. Auto balance happens and another blue is forced to go to red. The original blue player returns to his team. The match is still 4v5

• Someone new joins the server and finally red team has a 5th man.

• After losing once to 3 people ganging up on him, he leaves the server. Its 4v5 again

• Match finally ends with the score of 500 to 90

This is how the typical hotjoin game plays these days. I see a lot of people say GG after the match, I’m guessing 4v5 is a good game in their eyes since 4v5 is now the standard match. Its sad because no matter what server you go to it always ends up happening.

Elites are terrible in gw2, none of them have much synergy with builds. Were as with gw1, your build revolved around your elite.

And it seems to me, that Anet had a fetish with transforms. Two of guardian elites are transforms, warrior has one, ele has one, engi has one, I think all of necros are transform elites (lol), mesmer elite transforms the enemy.

Elites should of been much better versions of skill types the class already has, like for guardian they should have: A elite meditation, a elite shout, a elite spirit weapon, a elite signet, a elite symbol and a elite consecration and virtue. The same type of pattern should apply to the other classes.

And the cooldowns should be as long as normal skills, 3min cooldowns do not fit with such a fast paced game. I don’t think there were no 3min cds in gw1. I think the max I remember seeing was 1min.

While reading the arenajunkie forums one day I found a wonderful quote that summarizes the current state of gw2 pvp:

“GW2 PvP is essentially a bunch of people fighting in a small circle spamming all of their skills. There is some teamwork involved in there somewhere but it is incredibly shallow compared to GW1 or WoW.”

Most people probably don’t want to hear this but this is true and is a great short description of the game.

CntrlAltDefeat.1465:

There is no L2P issue when there is no counter to evade. Conditions can be countered, physical damage can be counter. Blocks can be negated with unblockable..what about high evade? there is no counter to high evade.

This is the biggest issue that most players tend to overlook. Going by what Anet said in their recent readyup about balance. Thief has no passive defenses, they only have active sustain aka evades and dodges. This is true. But when you look at the big picture in regards to passive defenses vs active defenses:

Passive defenses has ways to obstruct its function:

• Healing is countered by poison
• High armor is countered by vulnerability
• Defense boons such as prot and regen can be removed

So passive defenses has a definite counter. But when you look at active defenses:

• Dodge has weakness
• Evade has nothing

The difference between passive defense and active defense is quite large. What players need to understand is something simple: The greatest form of mitigation one can have is not getting hit at all.

High armor soaks up damage yes, but even lich form will hit a 3400 armored character for 5k. But with evades and dodges you can avoid hits like that entirely. This is what makes evade insanely powerful.

It makes even the most squishy character tanky because they aren’t receiving damage. Thief is the most complained about when it comes to evade simply because they have the option to choose when they want to evade instead of being bound to cooldowns. So this makes thief a non rotation based class, unorthodox in that regard.

The simple solution is to introduce across all eight classes ways to bypass evade. It can be one skill that does it or it can be a temporary buff like given to signet of strength that allows ones skills to bypass evade.

A mechanic that has no counter is toxic to the game. I can guarantee you that IF Anet introduced evade counter play among the eight classes then complaints about S/D would simply vanish.

The skills warrior uses for mobility are suppose to be used for gap closers not escape mechanisms. Its probably a oversight by Anet, because if its not then they would be hypocritical to had nerfed elementalist for the same reason.

Rush, Bull’s charge and Savage leap should all require targets to use.

Anet has never stated why they completely abandoned the gw1 pvp formula for gw2 pvp. I can understand tweaks and changes that weren’t possible in gw1. But they literally have taken nothing from gw1 pvp but skill names.

While I respect the OP’s perspective of why gw2 is hard to balance, I’m in total disagreement with his/her observations.

The original gw had more build customization than gw2 could ever have, yet it was much more balanced than gw2. Why? It comes down to the simple concept of reward vs punishment.

Punishment can come in a few different forms. One is being punished when you fail to connect with a skill, another is a were a skill itself has a form of punishment attached to it as a requirement, which offsets how powerful this skill is.

For example, lets look at gw1’s healing signet:

Healing Signet: You gain 82…154…172 Health. You have -40 armor while using this skill. Cooldown 2 seconds.

Healing signet heals for a lot of hp with a short cooldown, it also has other benefits like not using energy. In bold is the negative effect that offsets all of the positives that healing signet might have. In practical terms, what this negative effect/punishment does is cause the player to make conscious choices instead of spamming the skill. Why?

Because if they use the skill when they are being attacked then would take more damage than they are being healed for. So its necessary to set yourself up to not take damage when you use it. This could be done by using a knockdown then healing signet or a blind then using healing signet. But blind and knockdown can’t be spammed either, so the player only had small windows of opportunity to use them to setup a way to bypass the negative effects of healing signet.

Gw2 is opposite of the original gw in this respect. For most abilities there is no form of punishment associated with it: There is no punishment for failing many attacks nor is there any punishment that is associated to most skills. What this creates is the gameplay of spam until you hit something, use the skill each time its up regardless of the circumstance.

The best skills in gw2 revolve around not being penalized, the worst skills in the game have penalties associated with it. Which gives the illusion that they are bad skills.

Lets look at healing signet in gw2:

Healing Signet: Passive: Grants regeneration.
Active: Heal yourself.

Healing: 3,275 (0.5)?
Healing Signet: 392 Heal

There is no negative penalty to it. The player just equips it and thats it. The healing is done for them, no need for maintenance, no negative penalty for it being a strong heal over time that isn’t bound to cooldowns or cast times. The result? Is that mostly every warrior takes this for their heal. Why wouldn’t they? The other heals have some form of requirements associated with them. Healing signet doesn’t, so it minimizes the weakness that player may have with their build.

To sum things up for people who do not want to read:

• Gw2 imbalance comes from the lack of punishment associated with most abilities

• With no punishing elements present the result is spam and mindless playing

• Abilities that have some form of punishment associated with them are perceived as weak.

• Many combat mechanics in game have no polar opposite to counter them i.e evade, stealth. Which leaves these mechanics to go unchecked.

• Building upon how the negative element (punishment) is missing in game. One can see this pattern with little things like skills with instant to short animations but are very powerful with relatively short cds.

• Abilities with long cooldowns and casting times often are less powerful than abilities that are instant with short cooldowns. (Staff ele comes to mind)

• In order to remedy the imbalance problems gw2 has, Anet must give many abilities hard counters or negative effects to offset their strengths. For example gw2 healing signet could be: Active: Heals yourself for 3,200, Passive: Heals for 392 per second but as long as the passive is active you deal less damage.

Guardian:
Tanky and supportive guardians are in a strong position in many gametypes. We do feel that damage guardians are not as powerful as they could be. While we don’t want guardians to be as strong offensively as some of the other classes (given their powerful defensive abilities) we opened up more offensive guardian builds.

• Zeal V – Shattered Aegis. Damage instead of Burning.
• Zeal VII – Zealous Blade. This trait now scales with Healing power (2%.)
• Zeal XII – Kindled Zeal. Increased conversion from 10% to 13%.
• Radiance V – Searing Flames. Reduced cooldown from 20s to 10s.
• Radiance X – Powerful blades. Increased damage from 5% to 10%.
• Valor V – Retributive Armor. Increased conversion rate from 5% to 7%.
• Honor VI – Pure of Heart. Increased scaling with Healing power from 25% to 40%.
• Virtues VIII – Supreme Justice. Number of attacks going from 4 to 3.
• Symbol of Swiftness: This skill now applies 4 seconds of swiftness per pulse, rather than 8 seconds if you have no swiftness and 1 second if you have swiftness.

Hey Jon,

I decided to re post my perspective of the changes so its in accordance to the guidelines for good feedback you posted.

Zeal V – Shattered Aegis: Its a positive change, better than what we have now. I don’t expect it to have big damage since it is a adept trait.

Zeal VII – Zealous Blade: On paper it sounds like a good change, however all this will do is force guardian to use healing power even more, thus the repeatable theme we see “trading survivability for damage”. This trait is in the zeal line, imo it would be better if the healing scaled with power. So it can help the player focus on damage. So instead of scaling with 2% healing power, it could be 1% power.

Zeal XII: No matter what the conversion rate is changed to, the trait still is useless. For any other class it would be a powerful trait, but for guardian its not due to having one condition: burning. It would be more beneficial if it was changed to convert power to vitality instead.

Radiance V: Excellent change, makes sense. This is one of the changes I’m looking forward to trying.

Radiance X: Not needed, but if you guys want to buff it go ahead. I feel more dynamic things could be done with the trait, similar to what was done with mace. For example +5% damage and also increases vitality by 100.

Valor V: I don’t think anyone will feel this change, its rather on the weak side.

Honor VI: A change I’m confused about, the trait has been buffed once before and still no one takes it. Just as pointed out by a fellow player the bad thing about this trait is that you never see the heal due to aegis being removed when you first enter the fight with full health. My suggestion is make it a delayed heal or change it from aegis removal to each time you block but give it a respectable ICD so its not abused.

Virtues VIII: Interesting change, but I don’t feel guardian will be affected by it. Guardian isn’t a condition damage class, so because of this the change ultimately seems rather weak.

Symbol of Swiftness: A buff a nerf rolled into one. This change will only further hamper guardian’s mobility.

My thoughts on what Guardians problems are

There seems to be a misunderstanding in regards to what guardians need to open up more builds. Its not damage, any damage buff won’t change a thing. Guardians have several problems: lack of mobility, lack of cc, lack of health.

The lack of health limits the amount of builds a guardian can have, with no escape mechanisms, no mobility, no cc, it makes running builds without vitality and other defensive skills risky.

The lack of cc makes being a melee class a nightmare, if you can’t stick to your target to do damage then you are a ineffective melee class. Like wise, guardian has poor ranged options. So there is no compromise for their weaknesses. Either they need the ability to stay on targets or keep targets near them. Or their ranged options need to be buffed.

The lack of mobility is related to what I wrote above.

My proposed changes:

Traits:

• Glacial Heart: Lower the ICD to 10 seconds, Reduce chill duration to 2 seconds. It now works with all weapons.

• Pure of Heart: Heal delayed by 3 seconds. Merged with courageous return in Valor

• Kindled Zeal: 10% of power is converted to vitality

• Zealous Blade: This trait now scales with 0.50% power.

Mace:

• Faithful Strike: Changed to be a cleave, casting time reduced to 1/2.

• Symbol of Faith: Cast time changed to 3/4

Sword:

• Zealot’s Defense: Can now be used while moving, fixed so the projectiles have a better chance to hit targets.

• Flashing Blade: Range increased to 900

Hammer:

• Ring of Warding: Can now be used while moving

• Zealot’s Embrace: Cooldown reduced to 10 seconds

Great Sword:

• Binding Blade: Leash ranged increased to 900

Allie Murdock.8152:

Volrath.1473:

Get into the game and play it, talk with ppl in the Mists (if you can find anyone there) there are dozens of threads in this subforum with detailed feedback, videos, screenshots, practical examples and some suggestions too.

I don’t understand why you keep asking for constructive feedback have you read it all already? if so, i’m sure you won’t need any more…

So, I shouldn’t promote constructive feedback because of why?

Do you want us to actually fix the problems you are having, or do you want us to just wing-it without knowing what the actual problem is?

It’s completely your choice to use hyperbole and not be constructive, but don’t expect us to read your mind or understand how to fix the issue if you don’t give us any detailed information regarding it.

Yes, there is constructive feedback. However, if we get 1 constructive post out of 10, how do we know that it’s a real issue if those 9 posts don’t actually give us any information?

Hey Allie,

I’m glad to see you actively involved in the thread. Personally, I usually have a sarcastic approach of how gw2 pvp is currently being handled. But to be fair, I’m sure the gw2 team really does try their best though.

I’ll try to lay out my personal opinions about pvp currently. The only thing I can really compare it to is gw1, since that was the pvp game I played for many years. So in that respect my opinions are always measured by the bar gw1 set. Here goes:

Pros:

1. Dynamic combakittens very fun to watch.
2. Potential for each class to fill any role
3. Dodge is potentially a good mechanic
4. Foundation for unique team work mechanics in place (combos)
5. Class themes are great

Cons:

1. Lack of counter skills, in gw1 have a problem with a melee train? Bring a anti melee skills like empathy, blind, spiteful spirit. This is non existent in gw2.

2. Lack of punishment with skills. This is why perma stealth exists, this is why spam exists, actions aren’t being punished if you do not land them or tactfully use them. Abusive mechanics need to be eliminated.

3. Lack of intellectual approach to skills. On paper we have things like chill, weakness etc. In gw1, one would stop to think when is the appropriate time to use these skills. In gw2, you just spam because you can get away with it.

4. Aoe is much too strong, needs to be toned down.

5. Casting bars are missing, I know Anet said they wanted players to observe animations and such. Problem with this is, tiny characters, instant animations and bright particle effects negate this reasoning.

6. Dodge is just available too much, it really needs to feel like a choice you do not want to blow on any skill.

7. Classes are pigeon hold into roles due to lack of coherence in trait design. For example guardian is generally bunker, because nothing else is generally that effective due to class design.

8. Lack of game modes that rival GW1. No HoH, AB etc.

9. Spvp feels like its disconnected from every other aspect in the game. In gw1 players could bring their pve skins to pvp. Pvp players could win stuff to sell from chest that helps them in pve. So there was a unity between the two.

10. Assist target audio doesn’t not play, the assist target ping in gw1 was superior. Since it got ones attention.

11. Damage in pvp is way too high. It says a lot when someone with high toughness gets flatlined in a matter of secs. Damage needs to be toned down or more anti damage buffs need to be introduced. Example: http://wiki.guildwars.com/wiki/Protective_Spirit http://wiki.guildwars.com/wiki/Reversal_of_Fortune

12. There are just too many ways to disable enemies in pvp

13. Conditions are a bit too strong, but if they were changed condition removal would feel too strong. A balance must be created.

14. Too much passive and AI gameplay in a pvp game. Summons, passive traits etc.

15. Game lacks teamwork compared to the original

These are just my opinions of course, some may agree some may not. That is ok.

In the coming months I really hope devs change pvp for the better. Right now it sort of feels like the hidden feature of gw2. No one knows about it and its pretty much separated from everything else.

I feel with more ways to counter enemy builds, it would open the doors to more versatility and competitiveness. I also feel that there has to be a distinction between single target and aoe. Right now aoe is just too strong and spammy.

Errant Venture.9371:

A thief is tissue paper even in full soldiers. Stop complaining about their escape mechanics, they’re perfectly manageable if you’re not a trash player.

This is a deceptive statement. You are looking at it from the perspective that they would die fast if they sat in the front lines soaking up damage like a warrior and guardian. Problem with this, each class folds when they are focused when hit by burst damage. Heavy armor or forms of mitigation like protection do not help.

What you aren’t saying is, realistically this never happens with thief. Since they have access to stealth and teleports which forces the enemy to drop target and lose sight of them. That is their mitigation, along with their blind spam. There is a age old saying about tanking, the best form of mitigation is to not get hit at all.

Thief has the best mitigation in the game, since they have the highest chance and the access to the most tools that allow them to avoid damage entirely. This is why players who use other classes complain, its easier to target a tanky necro and warrior than it is to target thief and efficiently kill them.

Infiltrator strike in its current form shouldn’t even exist. There is no punishment for using it over and over again other than wasting initiative which is trivial since its relatively easy to get back. On the other hand, classes who have to deal with this skill is severely punished since they have to deal with the fact that they can never keep target on the thief or catch up with them. Its a get out of jail free card that can be used practically any time with no repercussions what so ever. Its just as good as shadow step, which is a utility with a long cooldown.

Cloudwalkernz.1328:

I just met a guy with 5 legendary in a dungeon PUG. I have a legendary as well but that guys just made me feel so under-equipped – almost feel like naked even!

Come to think of it, most people in Pug nowadays have at least 1 legendary. Many have 2 or more. If you use the number of people standing outside of the LA bank as an indication, 8 out of 10 people must have at least 1 legendary. The last 20% must be people who have just started, people playing alts, or people simply don’t like the looks of the legendary.

I think it is about time to make legendary weapon legendary again:
TIME TO RAISE THE LEVEL CAP!

This will make all current legendary obsolete. New better looking and harder to get level 100 legendary can be introduced. Image your legendary weapons are rare again and not a standard issued piece of tin foil that everyone who wants it has.

You all agree with me? Yes!

Raise the cap because someone has more than you? I disagree, I have a legendary and I’m working on my second. And I’m not a bit concerned about those who already have two, three, four or however many legendaries. Stop worrying about what others have and you don’t.

Levitas.1953:

either you cant afford a legendary or you crafted one not for the skin but for vanity. ill craft sunrise soon, i dont care if its too common or whatever: i love it.
stop looking at the others, look more at your char instead.

This.

You guys who care about what others have, are quite insecure and need people to have nothing in order to make you feel good and accomplished. Focus on yourself instead of projecting upon others.

Ars Valde.8693:

AKA: crappy design for the encounter that requires mobility and awareness in an area that hinders both.

Worst part is the visibility of the red danger circles on the floor, you can barely see them since the floor itself blends in with the circles.

Elite specializations killed pvp. Before that pvp was “ok”. Elites specs are too strong but they were never changed to be balanced with core traits and skills. You know there is a problem when nearly every class is REQUIRED to use their elite specs to be competitive. There is a huge difference between choice and required.

KrisHQ.4719:

So many GW1-Worshippers. Did you honestly expect GW2 to be exactly like GW1?

Simply put…yes. Why would you change something that isn’t broken? Its like Capcom vastly changing the formula of Street Fighter from what people have been use to all of these years. The only thing they do is add and take away different mechanics from the game, but they never change the basic formula.

GW1 was intended to be a pvp game from the start….pve was suppose to be something that you did to understand the gameplay mechanics I think. I don’t think Anet ever intended for a strong pve following but it happened.

GW2 is the total opposite, built for pve experience from the ground up with pvp as a bonus. They felt gw1 pvp was too complex and just chopped it all together because they wanted to get more casuals into the pvp playing field. But people who like pve will prefer pve over pvp regardless of how simple they make it.

But yes, if they had taken the gw1 pvp formula and added dodge and jump to it, that would of been a more ideal progression of the system. But to take away: build variety, strategy, team work, game modes, to take away everything, is just too much.

When the answer to how to counter other players in this game is to dodge 90% of the time, then it shows you how very very simple the game is in comparison to the original.

Aberrant.6749:

Aza.2105:

Aberrant.6749:

Aza.2105:

Aberrant.6749:

Aza.2105:

Chaos.3579:

I agree totally to the idea that blocking,evading should un stealth the stealthed player .however Not miss(blind),or invulnerable.

Also there should be a compensation. Such as no revealed debuff on the player. Or AT least a smaller timer on the revealed. Maybe 1second revealed instead of 4.

This is a bad idea, you aren’t suppose to compensate someone for their failure. Its like missed/block/evaded skills not going on cooldown because they didn’t land.

This post is quite ironic.

Really now, tell me why.

Because this thread is basically asking for compensation for when the players failed to stop the thief from entering stealth in the first place… the only one that can not be countered is blinding powder.

No one is talking about cloak and dagger. Most of the complaints are about D/P thief.

You can counter bp->hs…

This is very generic. You mean some classes have options to deal with it, not counter it. Note the some classes part. Regardless, they will not be able to keep up with the reapplication of bp+hs combo since they are bound to static cds while thief is not.

Obtena.7952:

Lonewolf Kai.3682:

Obtena.7952:

If you compare with Warrior, you can justify any outlandish suggestion. I don’t think comparisons to other professions are compelling arguments for change. Based on all the access we have to defensive tools, a buff to VoR isn’t really necessary IMO.

What do you think about the active though? It does seem pretty weak.

I do personally feel that untraited passive healing for Guardians need some tweaking, but I can see your point too. However, that active….

I feel active VoR is somewhere between our #6 (in strength) and some of the weaker healing effects we have. I’m actually torn in honesty. While I don’t think it needs buffing, I’m generally not particularly impressed with Virtues as a game element. I feel there are two things wrong with the mechanics:

1. The stat you get for cooldown from traiting Virtue directly and significantly impacts ACTIVE but has little effect on PASSIVE (You need to trait 20 in Virtue before you can even THINK about benefiting your passive Virtues).
2. The effects (not speaking specifically) aren’t strong enough to be noticeable, not weak enough to complain (too much). Some might call that “balanced” but as THE defining profession game element, it’s lack luster.

I’m probably LESS concerned about those things for VoR because of the way that the game pushes people to optimizing their offensive in PVE.

Virtues aren’t impressive because they are only signets. They are pretty much identical in function. While all other classes have a unique class attribute, guardian has three signets for theirs. Its entirely underwhelming.

To be honest I’d rather they revamp virtues entirely. Hell they could even copy WoW paladin and they would be better.

Virtue of Justice: While active increases your crit damage, power and critical rate, increases damage by 10%, lowers defense by 10%.

Virtue of Courage: While active increases your toughness, reduces incoming damage, reduces condition duration, reduces damage by 10%.

Virtue of Resolve: While active increases healing power, provides passive hp regen, increases boon duration, provides +25% run speed buff.

Virtues would be changed to function similar to how elementalists auras do. Except instead of gaining a whole new skill set while you are attuned you get the functions I named.

KrisHQ.4719:

Aza.2105:

https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/pvp/pvp/Former-rank-1-GvG-GW1-talks-GW2-competitive/page/3#post2047229

Well. It would be waste to create a whole new game which is basically just GW1 with better graphics.
They have already created the mechanics for GW1 and naturally they wanted to try something different. They looked at the flaws GW1 pvp had and tried fixing those.
That is for instance the viewer-friendlyness. And imo GW2 is much easier to spectate than GW1.
If the way GW2 turned out is not for you, that is a shame but fortunately GW1 is still accessible and teams are still playing.
I agree that GW2 has a long way to go, and maybe we need a new game-mode before it takes off. That said, i do not believe GW2 has kittenty pvp.

Then the game should of been called something else. Here is the description of gw1:

http://wiki.guildwars.com/wiki/Guild_Wars

Some key quotes:

The first campaign of Guild Wars, Guild Wars Prophecies was released on April 28, 2005. The different genre was chosen (as opposed to the classic “Massively Multiplayer Online (MMO) RPG”) due to the perceived differences between the game and other, more traditional MMOs: the focus on Player versus Player (PvP) rather than Player versus Environment (PvE) play made it almost a unique case at the time.

and another:

“The game was designed from the ground up to be a competitive multi-player experience, focusing on high-level combat between two or more parties focusing more on player skill and innovative play rather than equipment, time played or sheer numbers, a stark contrast to other MMOs of the time. The game introduced revolutionary concepts such as protection and allowed casters to spend the majority of a fight casting. Other MMOs of the time relied on defensive characters out-healing their opponent’s damage in what amounted to be a “red-barring” contest that focused less on skill and more on level and attrition. Additionally, casters were often forced to spend significant portions of every fight waiting for (the equivalents of) energy to regenerate or skills to recharge. Guild Wars changed this by introducing effective forms of energy management, such as Attunements and Inspiration Magic, as well as a considerably higher rate of regeneration (and lower maximum energy pool) than other games allowed."

I guess to summarize it, GW2 is everything GW1 is not. And for pvp, that is a bad thing. Pve however needed to be changed to appeal to more people.

NevirSayDie.6235:

That’s pretty broad. How do you suggest going about equally nerfing all defensive capacity for every profession?

Or if you simply think all damage should be increased, are you willing to accept the 1-shot gameplay that will come with that? Lich form autoattack can already 1-shot some builds, 100-0 in a single auto (+procs). Should it do more damage?

I don’t think the OP understands what he/she is saying.

Firebrand lacks focus.

Mantras are melee and cone (why???). Tomes are range. Tomes require 2 distinct stats to be optimal. You have a condi axe, but when you are using tomes you can’t use the condi axe. It needs something to bring it all together. Maybe like going through tomes improves your stats in another area or something. I don’t know! It just feels off.

wookie.8934:

Amins.3710:

We will no longer be the player to make the initial push into enemy lines.

Last I checked, Warriors we’re supposed to be the ones opening the battle, IIRC.

No they were suppose to both charge into the front lines. Anet said it themselves, they gave Guardian shadow step skills and not escape skills because they want them to teleport to the target and expected to fight there.

With that being said, in the video the devs were cautious to nerf guardian because of these changes. In fact, because of the new mechanics they expect guardian to move upward in the future.

The biggest mistake they made in the class design imo is designing them around boons. Their low hp pool and lack of burst damage is because of this fact. Its a problem because boons aren’t exclusive to guardian. Everyone has them!

Lets take a look at Guardian’s utility.

I’ll rank utility from the most used to the least used.

1. Shouts
2. Meditations
3. Consecrations
4. Spirit Weapons
5. Signets

Shouts are probably the most versatile and balanced utility guardians have. They benefit allies, they remove conditions when traited for them and they have relatively low cooldowns. Out of all the utilities these are the ones I see guardians use the most.

Meditations are probably the most second used utility. With the recent changes to them, they are more attractive. While they do not provide much group utility, they provide guardian with more offensive capabilities.

Consecrations are very odd, they are on very long cooldowns with the exception of purging flames and wall of reflection. The biggest issue with them is, that there is no stun breaker on consecrations. So this makes building a triple consecration build very hard, unless you take Indomitable Courage and Shielded Mind. Giving consecrations a dedicated stun breaker would potentially open up more builds.

Spirit weapons are among the weakest of guardian utilities. Not many people use them and for a good reason. You give up everything to use them only to be rewarded with them dying instantly to aoe. Traits are scattered among three different trait lines, forcing players to be pigeonholed into a build. There are too many traits for spirit weapons and they could do well being consolidated so that they are only in one tree.

The spirit weapons themselves are poorly designed. Extremely low hp, mobility, utility, damage. There is absolutely no reason to take these over shouts, meditations or consecrations aside from the sometimes used shield of avenger. Out of the four spirit weapons bow of truth is the worst one, it does nothing of value to assist the player. Its condition removal is slow, unreliable and its healing does not scale with healing power.

Spirit weapons cooldowns are much too long and the casting times are long as well. The durations are short. Which puts guardians into a awkward position, you either have to summon them before a fight which makes the duration shorter, or you can summon them in battle which makes you vulnerable to attacks.

Signets in my opinion are the worst of guardians utilities. How many players have you seen use a signet build? Probably not many. Aside from signet of judgement, the rest are sorely lacking. A condition damage signet when guardian doesn’t have a condition build? Bane signet is clunky due to the cast time. Signet of Mercy is absolutely horrible. And here is the most interesting part, the devs give a trait to remove conditions when you use signets.

Its short sighted design, remove one condition when you use signet of mercy? That takes 3 seconds to cast and has 2min+ cd. How is that worth it? With bane signet and signet of wrath you have to prematurely use them to remove CC. It makes no sense. The only signet that inscribed removal works well with is signet of judgement (and signet of resolve but its not utility) . Why? Its instant and its a defensive signet. Inscribed removal does not work well with offensive signets or signet of mercy due to its long cooldown and cast time.

To summarize, out of all of the available utility only 3/5 are commonly used. Jon says he wants to open up more possible builds. Perhaps if guardian had viable signets and spirit weapons then we would see more builds emerge. Signets need a overhaul, spirit weapons need the changes seen to ranger spirits. The cooldowns, casting time are too long, the survivability of them are too poor. There are just too many spirit weapon traits scattered through out the trait lines.

I believe by fixing the two utility types I named, it would open up a world of new possible guardian builds. If anyone wants to add or invalidate what I have said feel free. I’m open to all perspectives, negative or positive or those who agree and disagree.

I’m sure those who defend this current system are from games like Aion, Lineage 2 and Tera. Typical Korean games that gives these type of players a sense of self worth, since they got lucky and were able to get a item before another player. Thus, giving them the false sense that they have accomplished something.

That’s all good for a Korean game, but this isn’t one. This is a American game. Its absolutely shameful that Anet has decided to use RNG to this magnitude, let alone a notorious grind. For what? A skin.

What developer wants to create content that only a handful can experience? I’m sure people will agree with me when I say, I don’t give a kitten about someone else running around with a legendary. I don’t see them as special or elite, that’s their business. I just want my own, for me.

Josh Foreman.8250:

Rocky launch

Difficulty spikes

Inadequate rewards

Can’t farm

Also, I’m bad at the maths.

I hate to say it, but its true.

As much as I enjoyed W1, I just can’t seem to enjoy W2. For the reasons you said.

Remember the days of nes, how sometimes the games would just cut out and you would lose your progress? And sometimes even saved games would erase. It made me very paranoid…just as I was about to beat the game, boom someone slams the door and the nes game goes out and cycles over and over to the title screen. Yeah…..

Thats how it feels with w2, I’m always very edgy because at any moment I can get a internet outage, a error 7 crash or anything that disrupts progression. After that its GG and I have to start alllllllllll the way over again. Quite frustrating.

A lot of the enemy mechanics are too unforgiving. Ninja’s knockdown is op, because its seems random and you can’t dodge it (because there isn’t very much room to dodge in most parts) and they go invul. I was thinking back about the days of ninja gaiden (nes). All the enemies could knock you back but they also died in one hit. So if you memorized the patterns of the enemies and their lay out on the level, it was possible to go through the entire stage without getting touched.

I don’t like the bauble achievement either, because you must do the entire stage without d/c to earn it. If it was done in the same way as the secrets achievements, were it has a counter then it would be ok.

Darts should be nerfed too, its very punishing for something so unsuspecting.

Charak.9761:

tomes need perma stability to make them at all viable

I used to run tomes with lyssa rune (stability on elite and full condi cleanse), but the nerfed to the rune made the tomes worthless

At launch tomes did have stability, then they removed it and replaced it with retaliation for tome of wrath and protection boon for tome of courage. Overall tomes have always felt clunky, as all transformations do in this game.

With that said, buffing spirit weapons is good news despite some people being on the fence about it.

One of the biggest problems in this game is diversity, a lot of it has to do with the community’s overall perspective but the other portion is that some skills are down right bad. With guardian we have two three utility categories that are frequently used:

1. Shouts
2. Meditations
3. Consecrations

All three of those are in a pretty good spot, but signets and spirit weapons go relatively unused. So 2/5 utility categories go unused. So 9 skills are unused, that’s quite significant. Also, the only reason why zeal tree feels underwhelming is because spirit weapons are. With spirit weapons viable the zeal tree by proxy becomes viable as well.

Hopefully they make the right moves with the changes. I imagine somehow spirit weapons will also be able to provide boons, but we’ll see.

Balance changes that happen every 6 months is what really kills pvp. If you look at GW2 pvp competitors like mobas and even a fps like Overwatch, balance changes happen way more frequently. Maybe once per month.

Right now gw2 pvp is a hot mess. There needs to be a stronger focus archetypes, instead of allowing some classes to do everything at once.

If you have high damage you should be super squishy, with little defensive skills. If you are a bunker your damage should be low, but you have lots of defensive skills, if you are a hybrid you can do a little of both but excel at neither. Etc etc

It kind of was like that at the beginning but then hots came….and well things became way worse. At this point, I’m not too sure if anet actually cares or not. Probably not. Pve is where the money is.

Gehenna.3625:

This stormbow doesn’t look much like the original one beyond the basic shape. What made it look different and cool in GW1 is completely gone in this version.

Clearly you are viewing the gw1 version through rose color glasses.

http://wiki.guildwars.com/images/6/60/Texmod_YellowLightStormBow.jpg

It was suppose to be conditions, but then Anet gave them condition removal on par with guardian. Currently Warrior has no weakness.

Sensotix.4106:

hooma.9642:

Sensotix.4106:

Sarrs.4831:

Sensotix.4106:

i agree with what you said and yes you don’t have to be a top player to say new game modes etc

but then i see others doing videos and posting it on the forums saying stuff like make mesmers gs close ranged ..and something like that … it just seems like some people don’t have enough knowledge of pvp and the problem is people agree with them because they know as little as they do and then the devs will start thinking about it since a lot of people agree..

Even if they did end up with “make mesmer gs short-ranged”, which is a ludicrously tight avenue to actually gain any real support as this seems to be a vote as to which topics to discuss, there’s nothing to imply that they’ll actually think about acting on the request. This is just starting discussions, not actually deciding what to do. It’s stage two in a four/five stage procedure.

yea this was one example of what i read or see on the forums and i just couldn’t watch it and say nothing so i will also make a video and see if people agree

actual u are just 1 of the 90% who thinks only his suggestions are the right one and all others are wrong. thx for the showcase!

have you ever played one single team q?
how can you judge me and my knowledge about pvp when you don’t even play it

Just like you judge people you don’t even know. What is the difference?

I personally feel that Anet doesn’t play their own game. Instead, I believe they only design stuff on paper but do not actually see how it plays out in game. I’m sure there are mathematical spread sheets that theoretically explain the way things are. And that their are general ideas that justify decisions being made.

Take conquest for example. When you hear the developers reasoning on why they choose conquest. It makes sense to a degree. But then when you put into practice the reasoning, it doesn’t work out well. The purpose of the conquest style arena was to make sure thakittens easy for viewers to follow. But realistically in game or even when you watch, it doesn’t make it easy to follow.

In fact, it only makes things more difficult. With the current design, gw2 is very difficult to follow. You can’t really tell what is going on besides someone is dead and they are getting rezzed. Why? Because of, shared animations, very short animations, asuras, particle effects and the ungodly amount of aoe spam in the game.

What the conquest mode does is intensify this. How? It puts everyone in a small circle (the capture point), were they just spam skills. Some where within all of that, someone dies but the viewer doesn’t know how. And usually neither does the player. This is just a example.

My perspective is, anet needs to open up test servers so the pvp community can test out changes. There has to be more open communication from dev to the player. There are a lot of complaints on the forum yes, many get erased, some people even get banned. But they share one thing in common, the people making those posts actually care about pvp improving. Anet should be happy, that players come here to voice their opinion about the game. Whether its negative or positive, though the negative would be more beneficial.

CptAurellian.9537:

The changes to the guardian healing skills won’t achieve anything. Healing breeze is broken/useless by design and Litany of Wrath would need to be an instant cast to be taken seriously.

Bingo!

Unfortunately even though you have a valid opinion about both skills, Anet will push those changes through anyway. The result will be the same situation we have now: No one will use healing breeze or litany of wrath.

laharl.8435:

“That comment only cements that you don’t know the game mechanics very well and shouldn’t be commenting here.”

That was in response to you saying “It’s pve, it doesn’t matter”. It’s elementary to most that build does matter in pve in relation to speed, efficiency, ease and in some cases, success of a dungeon run. If you believe build doesn’t matter at all, why do you keep commenting here?

“You haven’t even followed the conversation at all.”

That was in reference to your comment saying it’s only about getting from point a to point b. This entire time we’ve been talking about what is more viable in doing so, not just getting there. This seems to have flown over your head.

“If you don’t realize certain builds do it better, than you are no good in pvp either. "

Simple logical deduction here. Pvp and pve are quite similar, a build tailored for a job will give the player an edge, a higher success rate or an easier run. You don’t believe that a tailored build matters in pve for a given task, when it’s obvious it does, just like pvp. If it’s so hard for you to realize this in pve, it’s equally as hard in pvp. In pvp, I run tailored builds that will excel in the task I want to achieve, just like pve. This is a very simple connection and one maybe some day you’ll realize.

Anyway, you’ve taken this way off course. We’re were discussing support builds for pve, lets just stay on track.

I haven’t followed the conversation? You would do well to apply that to yourself and others here advocating builds. None of which have anything to do with the OP’s question. The OP asked if his build was viable, unless you are capable of changing the definition of viable then it means can he be successful with it. The answer is yes, he/she could.

Furthermore, if you want to talk about contributing you would be better off trying to attack people who saying things like “ah sucks learn to dodge roll”. Because that kind of behavior isn’t helping “new players” either. The question is why didn’t you? Probably because you are in agreement with what they are saying. So for you, its ok for others to say things that aren’t particularly helpful as long as you are in agreement with them. I’m sure if I made a post like “AH sucks” then you wouldn’t of bothered to try to project upon me.

What I said about pve, bothered you because it undermines the importance of your agenda. If pve isn’t difficult then by proxy it negates any importance a “meta build” may have.

Also about comparing pve to pvp….just don’t. In most cases you always win in pve no matter how slow it is or what build you are running. In pvp ones build will simply determine if they win or lose. That is not the same.

In regards to going off topic, this thread went off topic as soon as it became about AH sucks, so run this build. So in that regard, you best take it up with the people who deviated the thread at the beginning.

Once you get team work down, dungeons are easy. Perhaps too easy lol.

geekilo.8512:

Here are my problems with DH ^^
Overloaded heals, too many daze
Assumed meta trap build with marauder amulet
Heal skill (purification)- initial heal = 2k heal, active heal = 6.5k heal , smiter’s boon = 2k heal. Total = 10.5k heal on a 24s CD
Utility skills: JI = 2k heal, CoP/smite condition = 2k heal
Elite skill: Renewed focus= 2k heal
Total possible heal- heal trap- 10.5k, utility skills- 4k, elite skill- 2k, 2x F2- 8k heal = 24.5k of healing
Don’t you think that’s a little too much healing for a offensive elite spec ??

Daze on trap
There needed to be a CD on that 5-10s ICD.

Nah all of this is fine. In fact everything was like that before hots. Heal trap isn’t that strong, I think signet of resolve can heal for a large chunk too. You just never see guardian use it because….signets kind of suck.

See your problem is you do not understand the design philosophy of guardian. They are meant to engage in combat and stay there. This has been specifically highlighted by anet numerous amounts of times. To stay there in the fight, they need sustain. If they can’t sustain themselves they are broken because they do not have the tools to move in and out of combat at will.

The only real problem is your approach to fighting guardian, I’d say you have tunnel vision….like many pvpers out there. Just because you are failing to kill a class, doesn’t automatically mean they are broken or overpowered. It usually means that you haven’t formed the skills to learn how to beat them. So stop calling out nerfs because “you” are losing.

Here is a small list of stuff that counters guardian:

1. Poison
2. Retaliation (probably would make the guardian kill themselves with all the aoe)
3. Range them, eliminating most of their damage since its all pbaoe.
4. Unblockable skills like signet of strength etc
5. Condi overload

Its not hard, its only hard when you do not want to change how you approach a situation.

Mrbig.8019:

Aza.2105:

Mrbig.8019:

the weakest proff in the whole game, probably the worst designed one.

One of the worst designed ones, perhaps. The weakest? No. If they were you would never see them in pvp. Just how in the beginning necros and to a degree warriors were very rare to sight in pvp.

Shadow refuge is the answer.

Group stealth is the most OP thing in the game, who cares if thief is the weakest profession ( even when mug was still critting and S/D thieves were non-existant, thieves were B tier at best).

The thief IS the weakest profession, especially now that wars have been buffed into oblivion.

When S/D will be brought down ( hopefully in the proper way, by fixing Inf strike), acro S/D will be the only one left, since they totally demolished any burst option from the thief ( and we don’t really have any other option).

When mug was still critting no one used s/d because fs was garbage, it barely hit due to poor tracking.

laharl.8435:

Aza.2105:

laharl.8435:

The op is asking for help, simple as that. I was simply trying to provide that for him. I have experience with the build he proposed. He was also asking about support, so I recommended a build I know to have better support than the AHEM build. I was staying on topic by trying to help him. You think telling him it’s pve, it doesn’t matter is good advice and staying on topic, I don’t.

The comparisons I made between pve and pvp are completely valid. A tailored build will make you better at your job in both game modes. There is really no refuting this, much as you may try. The fact that you don’t yet realize this means you should really stop trying to give advice to new people when you’ve so much yet to learn yourself. This is a simple idea that applies to almost all games, pve and pvp alike.

You are a hypocrite, you aren’t concerned about giving good advice to a new player, if you were you would of bothered quoting those who were acting like kitten when AH build was mentioned. You didn’t bother because it suits your agenda and you are in agreement with them.

Also, I never said different builds didn’t help you perform better in pve. You actually said that for me and continue to say it for me. Find me the post in this thread where I disagree with “A tailored build will make you better at your job in both game modes.”. Find it.

No need to start in with name calling. Sure, some people are more hostile than they need to be. I’m not the forum police, I took issue with you because of how far off base you are.

After colesy’s post explaining multiple reasons why a tailored dungeon build is better for dungeoning, you said “It doesn’t matter, it’s pve”. You imply that any random traits thrown together will provide the same outcome simply because it’s pve. Sorry, but that build and others like it will make for easier, faster dungeon run. Not all builds are created equal.

Right, so you responded to me because I wasn’t agreeing that AH is bad. You confirm what I was saying. Like I said, if I so happened to be on the “AH is bad, bad players use it” bandwagon. Then you wouldn’t had singled me out. Because yeah its ok to be hostile as long as they are in agreement with you. How messed up is that?

You are a hypocrite and its not even name calling. Because if you were so concerned about how advice was given to new players as you initially said, then you would of also applied that logic to the posters who were in agreement with you but were hostile to AH users.

I asked you to find where I disagreed with such a statement “A tailored build will make you better at your job in both game modes.” Are you going to show me where I disagreed?

Darkedge.5064:

Sounds interesting. What do the other guys think about it. Should be only changed the traits and add some new things to the weapons or should be the weapons as its own be reworked?

I mean it also could be good when they rework it like a pet from ranger or mecromancer or not?
What u guys think about it?

Spirit weapons are one of those things you just don’t talk about here. Anet doesn’t talk about them, we don’t talk about them. They don’t exist.

Ragnar the Rock.3174:

1: Shattered AEGIS, Damage is pathetic (Make it apply confusion stacks when an AEGIS you apply is broken. would work good for condi guardians in Spvp then.)

Shattered Aegis is fine, you might be looking at it from a solo perspective. Which ends up looking weak (up to a 2.2k+ hit if you are zerker). The real beauty in shattered aegis is when you combine it with communal defenses. What this means is for each person you grant aegis, if its broken you will do up to 2.2k damage per person. So imagine being in a zerg of lets say 40 people. You proc communal defenses and grant them all aegis, they are all hit. So this becomes 2.2k x 40, shattered aegis now does 88k damage.

Moving on. If I had the ability to communicate with devs to ask them to change some things, here is what it would be:

Signets & related traits

• All signets should have a instant cast time

• Perfect Inscriptions should grant regeneration in addition to the 20% passive bonus

• Signet of Mercy needs a complete change, its too niche Maybe the active can increase outgoing heals for a short duration.

Spirit Weapons

• AI needs to actually work, made to be more reliable

• Bow of Truth needs a overhaul, maybe change the condi removal and regen to a passive buff while the weapon is active. The active skill needs to scale with healing power.

• Eternal Spirit needs to be made baseline, replace it with a trait that increases the health of spirit weapons.

• Improved Spirit Weapon Duration (Valor V) should be combined with Spirit Weapon Mastery (Zeal VI). The way spirit weapon traits are organize makes the player need to dip into 3 trait lines, thus limiting possible builds

Mace

• Auto attack chain: Needs to be much faster

• Symbol of Faith: Casting time should be reduced.

• Protector’s Strike’s block should take priority over the aegis boon

Shield

• Shield of Judgment: Weakens enemies in addition to doing damage and granting protection to allies

• Shield of Absorption: Scales better with healing power, the dome duration increased from 4 to 8 secs. In addition after the dome is cast, the user can now be mobile. But the dome stays in the place where it was cast.

Rangersix.1754:

- Multiple waterfields can be dropped.
- Many classes possess over blast finishers with short cooldowns, Guardian included.
- Water fields have an extremely large base heal, completely eclipsing many other heals.
- Other heals have (large) cooldowns too, some (like regeneration) are tied to intervals while waterfields are not.

A water fields base healing is 1320, if one had 1600 healing power then the healing of the field scales up to 1640. That’s not extremely large, its average and it scales average. The thing is when you and others compare water fields to lets say a guardian heal. You are comparing dozens of people blasting vs one healing guardian. Then of course water fields would out heal it.

If you compare them 1:1, that is to say one person blasting vs one healing guardian then no a water field doesn’t even come close to a healing guardian. But if you want to compare it 12:1 or even 50:1 then certainly a whole zerg of players blasting would be better. So in that respect your comparison would contain many half truths and is a bit deceptive.

A skill like healing breeze out heals a water field blast, 50 guardians using healing breeze would out heal 50 people using a blast finisher in a water field. But 50 guardians running healing breeze would be impractical. So I think it would be better for you to say not that water fields out heal guardian heals but they are more practical to utilize than to have a zerg of guardians specialized to run healing breeze and other heals.

I believe tropical bird summon from rune of privateer has more health than spirit weapons. How messed up is that? lol

I’ve seen plenty of threads asking for anet to add a deathmatch mode to pvp. At first I agreed then I started to become totally against it. Why? The matches would be over very quickly, due to gw2 excessive damage and spamming of skills.

In gw1, the method of assist training wasn’t always guaranteed. This is because the damage was much lower and there were tons of ways to negate and minimize damage, knockdowns and interrupts. In gw2 there is no such thing.

So imagine what would happen. Everyone would focus a target that they know can’t get away and just burst them down in milliseconds. Thieves and mesmers would probably be the last classes standing due to stealth.

In gw1 there was supporting skills, so focusing a target while ignoring other enemies who buff and heal would be counter productive. Again in gw2, no such thing. Most fights would be cc spam and burst damage, followed by tons of complaints on how bad gw2 pvp is (which is true).

WhiteAndMilky.2514:

Because SoR and JQ don’t understand how to play long-haul, and get demoralized very quickly. It doesn’t take much to get either server to give up, even when they are full well within the range of re-taking a lead. They also have a tendency to get tunnel vision (maybe bad scouts, or lack of communication) and they forget that the large part of winning is defending objectives.

JQ and SoR like to make a lot of predictions, and spread false drama. If they spent less time doing this, and more time strategizing and playing the game, things might be different.

When JQ or SoR are winning: “It’s because we’re better”
When JQ or SoR are losing: “We don’t care about PPT, or seasons, or objectives, or obamacare”

When BG winning: “Sup?”
When BG losing: “Sup?”

Large number of my guilds most hardcore players played Battlefield 4 for 2 weeks and no GW2 WvW, still winning. No excuses mateys!

If you were in the position of JQ or SoR, you would be doing the exact same thing you claim they do. In fact, you are doing the same thing now. Its just from the opposite perspective.

Diage.6451:

Don’t forget Anet, designed it to have minimal choice. So that their job could be easier.

Seems like they had a easier time with GW1.