Guild Wars 2

Zeal 3 was providing me with good burst stacks of 20+ the last few days, I just don’t know if it was not worth it due to solo vs group might stacking, or some other mechanic was more important.

Try it out, with the justice passive triggers and virtues x/x/1 (3 hits justice proc) and the greatsword 2 on a group, it stacks up really quick.

Maybe not effective in the long run, but it provided some impressive numbers at first glance.

As you mentioned though, this does nothing for group might stacks, only solo. So maybe that makes it less useful because it is selfish, not group oriented.

I haven’t seen mention of this, and I’ve been gone for a while so I don’t know what is meta anymore…but:

How come no one is using the might and vulnerability stacking from Zeal 3/1/x?

That combined with Inspired Virtues allows for a fairly sustainable 25 stacks of might and vulnerability.

Since Radiance provides 50% crit chance on retaliation now, I dropped all the precision off my gear for what ever (mixed toughness/vitality because I couldn’t find a good ferocity mix that didn’t have precision).

With that I took:
Zeal 3/1/1
Radiance 1/3/3
Virtues 2/2/1

or

Zeal 3/2/3
Radiance 1/3/3
Virtues 2/2/1

The idea was to use spirit sword for vulnerability/fire stacks, which in turn assist crit dmg/chance and stack retaliation with greatsword abilities and virtue of justice spam/resets.

The remaining utility abilities were a kind of toss up, didn’t know what to take besides Sword of Justice and Stand Your Ground.

The crit chance and damage were good, power is well off, but the condition cleansing was lacking.

Is there something I’m missing, as far as no need to stack might and vulnerability anymore?

Got it, thank you.

I didn’t realize how recent these changes were. I haven’t even had a chance to try Dragonhunter yet.

Historically this has been a great resource for theory crafting and build development for me. No longer am I the experienced one so I hope there are still great leaders in this community to help evolve the class.

I’ll keep looking on here and excited to see what develops!

-edit-
Is this still a good site for planning builds?
http://en.gw2skills.net/editor/

Been gone for two years, used to main guardian. I noticed spirit weapons changed as I logged back in.

Is there a State of the Game post or resource that talks about current Guard strengths/weaknesses anywhere that has been compiled?

If not I guess I’m deep diving into these forums and trying to relearn this game.

I quit over a year ago, but I browse the forums to see if I want to come back. So far, I don’t want to come back but I really like the game? [insert confused face].

Oh an lawl at warrior poster and cries for nerfs, look at his post history. keep on strong “fourpuppies”.

So I told myself I would come back for the expansion, but was deterred with a lot of the initial feedback I heard. I played all the classes to 80, but Guard is what I prefer. Yet I have felt lackluster for a long time.

Also sounds like the initial shine and newness of the Dragon Hunter has worn off, so more realistic feedback now.

What would the general consensus be of the state of Guards and/or Dragon Hunters be in the game now? I mostly sPvPed and solo roamed.

Give it a shot? Or wait it out a bit more?

Let’s hear your opinions.

…to get one shot by everyone else. Jk, I don’t even play anymore but was curious to see what has changed over the last year. I was initially excited for the expansion but it is wavering at the moment. Disappointed with Dragon Hunter, but not completely turned off by it.

I missed the beta weekends, but I still have hope I’ll get absorbed by the game again. Sad to see there is still a lot of disappointment here on the guard forums though

Keep on the constructive criticism and suggestion posting though. Feedback and bug reports do help in the long run, just takes a while sometimes (3+ years). I think the biggest problem is conflict of ideas and directions between ourselves for the first part, but the developers as well. Consolidate and set common goals and maybe the devs will be more inclined to listen.

just leaving this here……the devs know and it’s intended….

Ready Up 35

So off a whim and more theory crafting I tried to make Signet of Courage work:

http://gw2skills.net/editor/?vVAQRApd8elsAhehYzQwTIQTEHDEV+HWwG0GATbBgzgS4GA-TJxHABIXGo2TCAAPBAM2fAA

It’s ugly, so kitten ugly. I hate the build when I look at it, but it actually doesn’t fare worse than the traditional shout bunker build.

Signet of Mercy was there just for the sake of “f” it I want to make Signet of Courage tick as hard as it can.

Could even change it up for shouts probably, now that I think of it.

#forthelawls

Two downed players killed me Nerf plox

L Stick – Move
L3 – Weapon Swap
R Stick – Look
R3 – Dodge
Up – F1
Right – F2
Down – F3
Left – F4
A – 1
B – 2
C – 3
D – 4
R1 – 5
L2 + A – 6
L2 + B – 7
L2 + C – 8
L2 + D – 9
L2 + R1 – 10
R2 – Jump
L1 – Target Nearest
Start – Menu1
Select – Menu2

L2 could act as a modifier for “shift state” on more keys, if you want weapon stow, call target, about face, F5, with a few more keys left.

If you want to get really crazy with shift states make both triggers (l2 and r2) modifiers I guess.

It “can” work, not as efficiently as the PC, but it can work.

The remaining issues are, is there a want/need for it on consoles, and the cost of maintenance/development. Right now the cost benefit is against making it on the console, not necessarily the feasibility.

Well, originally the bunker in any class build (which on release everyone expected guards to be tanky so the community forced them into the role) were supposed to survive 1v1 and hold off 1v2+ longer to allow points to tick and contest.

Being a team fighter is less about bunker and more about support, so the support the guard brings is primarily stability and condi cleansing (with stability less powerful now that it stacks, but still needed).

In PvE, guard support is primarily projectile reflects and blocks, but it is hard pressed to fit wall of reflection into a utility bar when trying to stay alive.

Team healing was never something that you used a guard for.

The other thing guards brought in bunker setup that people valued on team fights was staff for might stacks, but in a mobile team fight, the staff becomes harder to apply since range is limited, especially when moving.

So I guess what I am saying is, you don’t need to be a bunker to support team fights, since you can bring absolute resolution for clutch condi clears, blinds and stability for stomps and what not, and timed blocks with aegis. Also with virtues you have “some” might stacking with voj, but not as high as staff admittedly.

I want to make it work because analyzing other classes, they primarily sustain via avoidance/mobility and fast recharging healing skills.

We sustain mostly through our utility skills it feels. I agree that shelter/renewed focus feel so crucial to our survivability, but Litany of Wrath is our fastest heal, closer in line with the other classes.

If we can emphasize that strength we can open up utility skills to do more than lock down a source of healing.

Was doing random testing and was impressed with how well Litany of Wrath works with Burning, especially on a group of targets. Heals for quite a lot and you don’t have to maintain distance on the targets to keep healing going.

Just a small “ah hah!” moment, not game changing per say. But could help someone theory craft their own build.

The hammer guard build was primarily useful not because of Glacial Heart, but because of the concept of on swap burst combos, which involved Glacial Heart.

While taking meditations, you should have sufficient condi cleansing, and if you feel the need for one more push of condi cleansing, you can sub in Purging Flames. Either replace Judges Intervention for maximizing condition cleanse, or substitute Contemplation of Purity for maximum fire, and faster condi cleansing, with a bonus fire field for either sub.

If you need to take Absolute Resolution, you can augment the ons wap burst with sigils of hydromancy to simulate the effect.

I personally have been having decent success using GS/Hm

http://gw2skills.net/editor/?vVAQJARSlsAhqhY5QwbIwPEHxDVOFfyYsGANQ9e33YIHA-TpRBABecIAi4BAEfZgNOCA0s/AAXAAA

Choices between

• Zealous Blade / Blinding Jeopardy (better VoJ functionality & Vulnerability or Improved GS)
• Strength of the Fallen / Smiter’s Boon (better Condi Control or Better burst damage/healing)
• Strength in Numbers / Communal Defense (situational on if you run close to allies or more solo)
• Unscathed Contender / Retaliatory Subconscious / Master of Consecrations (Flavor you like, and/or if you want to run Purging Flames)
• Glacial Heart / Absolute Resolution (Burst or Survival)
• Sigil of Force / anything you like
• Rune of Strength / anything you like

I chose the Force and Strength to try to make up for lost damage modifiers, but they are not that crucial, so I am looking to rotate those out with something more useful.

You could even try to maximize crit with:
http://gw2skills.net/editor/?vVAQJARSlsAhqhY5QwbIwPEHBEVOBfxI0GAPwbe32IIDA-TpRBABecIAi4BAEfZgNOCA0s/AAXAAA

Trying to keep it short of a TLDR, so I’ll list the traits as:
Traitline (1/2/3) / (4/5/6) / (7/8/9)
For ease of reading and less text.

Overall I feel Zeal has few good choices and no variations. Raw damage increase and symbols is simply it.

Radiance has opened up more possible crit options for gear with low crit chance, but requires good burning sources. Grandmaster choices are weak.

Strong traitline, but shiled still needs some work.

The traits in here are mostly uninspiried, but the grandmaster traits compete against eachother too much.

This traitline makes virtues worthwhile, almost manditory I feel, as we rely on virtues for our basic class mechanic. Virtue passives need to be stronger I still feel.

Now that the dust has settled, do you think the class revamps and trait mechanics had any effective change? Why and why not?

Many skills are really getting pushed by ANet for us to use, but I feel after the first week or so, people are reverting back to pre-patch builds because those lesser used skills are still not worth it.

• Signets are still ineffective, if anything Bane Signet for the extra passive power if PvE
• Litany of Wrath is interesting, but we seem to need Shelter too much to move away from it.
• Merciful Intervention is clunky and worse off after they made it a targetable skill.
• Spirit Weapons are still sidelined
• Feel My Wrath works well in PvE, but Signet of Courage is just not enough.
• Burning builds are useful now, but I am seeing more and more revert back to regular power based builds.
• Damage modifiers are seemingly difficult to add into builds and very limited.
• ANet REALLY wants us to “love” retaliation as much as they do.
• The 3-line trait shuffle has some of our key traits in competition with each other, making us sacrifice even more synergies.
• Shield….

I’m sure there are a lot more to talk about, but this was just a top of my head list. Overall I feel the changes came out ineffective and I’m indifferent. Not horrible, but didn’t improve much.

There is not one “right” answer, but in general:

A 100% block for one attack is better than a (making up percentage) 1% reduction in all incoming damage. Reason being, you can potentially block a CC or a burst hit and stop a killing blow from happening or buy time for a cooldown/heal to be ready.

Now the reason why Communal Defense is not a no brainer and should always be taken….the range is abysmal, shorter than shouts (300 I think?). So the chances of this procing on your allies relies on coordinated response by either yourself and/or your allies to close in close to you.

Running up to then and popping a Protector’s Strike or Virtue of Courage may be your best bet, and that way you get a double block if anything.

It is “easier” and more consistent to run with Strength In Numbers, because it is a consistent effect and has a greater range, thus giving it better “up time” on allies as well as yourself.

Communal Defense provides nothing to the player, but potentially good coordinated effort to the group.

~20% damage modifiers are not ridiculous amounts of damage by any means and is honestly about on the lower end of standard across board (prior to trait patch, I have not looked again recently).

Having an auto chain doing about 1-2k damage every second is kind of unflattering, especially if the chain is slow and/or the rest of the abilities on the weapon do not offer substantial burst skills to ramp up dps.

I agree with the Op to some degree, a lot of traits got crammed together and will never be taken because they compete too harshly with build/class defining staples that are just about mandatory to have.

Build diversity hurts because it is a no brainer choice on some of these traits, and the interesting ones that could push the meta in new directions are too risky to choose over the current foundation.

Also the healing per second on symbols scales poorly and sees little benefit on symbols save for mace and hammer, with hammer it requires you to maintain an auto chain and do nothing else, with mace you have subpar burst capability and again you need to push hard into healing power to make it “good”, thus hurting damage and zeroing you back to “ineffective” instead of dynamic.

All opinion, and maybe someone can make a build that will break grounds, but I am trying many different things and I keep seeing the short comings.

Well just got a chance to try again and it works now for me. It seemed like some hops were timing out on my tracert, so it may have just been a wan thing and not the anet/ncsoft servers?

While not typically used with most guardian builds, the only way we can recover some damage while not changing gear is the following:

http://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Retributive_Armor
http://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Superior_Rune_of_the_Wurm
http://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Inner_Fire
http://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Radiant_Power (this is actually 10% to crit chance on burning targets now)

Radiant power, Inner Fire will net you about 30% more crit chance on top of your baseline 4% putting you at 34% crit chance. If you want you can replace the Sigil of Force for a Sigil of Accuracy to put you up to 41% crit chance, debatable.

Rune of the Wurm and Retributive armor will recover lost ferocity putting you up to about 181% crit damage, almost doubling your damage on crits. Typically want to get closer to above 200% but we are limited here.

Problem now, is we are sacrificing the ability to use Monk’s Focus or Altruistic healing in order to make up for lost damage. You “can” run without them, but majority feels they are mandatory in some degree.

I would suggest you take one of the two survival traits depending on if you are running solo or with a group as you start off, and then experiment without them as you feel comfortable.

So now you should have
Radiance (1 , x , x)
Valor (x, x, x)
(blank)

If you want to run shouts I would suggest Honor with Pure of Voice coupled with Altruistic Healing. Good group condi cleansing and self healing with allies around.

If you want to forgo the crit chance you can drop Radiance for Virtues for even better Altrusitic Healing synergy, but you are not really a healer and not really doing any damage at that point. Mostly just a boon bot for allies and cleansing condis, which is still nice, but has less of an effective feel on your end.

If you want to keep with the damage modifiers, you could go

Radiance (1, 3, 2)
Valor (2, 3, 2)
Virtues (2, 2, 3)

Helps maintain a good amount of retaliation to maintain 10% damage mod, provides self healing with Monk’s Focus and Meditations, and good group support with Virtue activation.

This is all forcing a square peg into a round hole, but it may help push the build in one direction or another?

Someone with better insight in wvw may have better suggestions, I’m just trying to think mechanically within the class is all.

Also depends on gametype, pve, pvp, and wvw

PvE guards are really strong.

WvW guards are good to have.

PvP guards are in a state of flux but still effective.

Solo, guards start to lose effectivness, as they shine in group scenarios.

Jerus, we just argued that guardian does not have “that” much better active defense and passive healing than warrior.

That said I prefer guardian after playing all the classes…I guess I’m a masochist

The build you want will depend a bit on your playstyle. I notice that it is WvW build, that said is it large group encounter or small group encounter based.

If you are running with a group at all, then Altruistic Healing will vastly increase your survival while you supply boons to your group.

If you are running solo then Monk’s Focus will help maintain a high degree of burst self healing.

Those two traits have been the staple of Guardian pvp/wvw builds for a long time. It is possible to run without them with success, but they are really good and nice to have.

Beyond that, you were gearing clerics and soldiers while traiting for damage modifiers and signets.

At the moment you do not have any significant healing occurring that healing power is going to emphasize, save for Virtue of Resolve and the new Signet of Courage. As SoC is new, it has yet to be given a stamp of approval, but initial review says that the 10 second tick is far too long.

Also with the lower power and next to no crit chance/damage, the damage modifiers you did trait for will see little to no return, so you have to choose on if you want to be a cleric supportive build or an offensive dps build. Guardian has had a hard time of finding a middle ground in being tanky and providing offensive pressure.

We CAN survive and do damage, but through a lot of active defense utilizing blinds/blocks/condi cleanses. That said one of our best survival skills has been shelter and renewed focus. Blocking potential burst damage has saved more guardians than recovering from burst damage with signet of resolve.

I am not a WvW expert and only did a couple months worth of havok squad and large squad fighting. So I hate to tell you to use a specific build, but from my experiences your build currently is spread thin.

Diag kicked this section out, yet when I individually tracert/pinged these locations it was successful ?

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Still unable to log in after about 2 hours, will try again tomorrow

I am actually having the same issue.

I flushed out my DNS
Checked for blocked programs on my firewall
Rebooted computer
Checked launcher arguments for any strange additions to the bootup
Reset my router

Everything works network wise minus GW2 launcher at the moment.

edit:

Saw I can run a -diag argument, so proceeding with that now. Maybe there is a downed ISP somewhere that I just happen to reach, but that should at least tracert it…maybe?

If you are trying to maximize damage modifiers and reach higher burst/dps then you need Zeal, Radiance, and either Virtues or Valor (Retributive Armor provides more Ferocity, but Virtues will probably be better with Unscathed Contender).

This is probably best seen in PvE where you don’t need as many survival traits and targets stay still in symbols to maximize damage.

Traits alone you would achieve:
7% on Burning
5% with Greatsword
10% to Symbols
10% to target in Symbols
10% with Retribution
20% with Aegis
~5% with Boons

Bringing in gear you will probably have:
10% Scholar Runes
5% Force
10% Night

Multiply all those together to gain:

1.07 * 1.05 * 1.1 * 1.1 * 1.1 * 1.2 * 1.05 * 1.05 * 1.1 = 2.18 damage modifier

On crits with somewhere around 225% crit damage in zerker gear it would turn into a 4.9 damage modifier, or 490% more damage, if I did that all right.

That takes a 3k Whirling Wrath up into a 14k Whirling Wrath.

That was all in a vacuum and honestly not all modifiers will apply at the same time depending on which weapon is active and so on, but its just to showcase stacking damage modifiers.

So zeal, is useful? But the game isn’t “just” about damage, and utility and support are needed, which is what the meta build meshes in along with maximizing damage.

Same question, you just emphasized the fact that it affects allies as well, which I thought was inherently understood in my post, but I guess not.

RF + Inspired Virtues + Absolute Resolution + Indomitable Courage + Justice is Blind = Group Support

FMW = DPS

So depends, do you want haste and some fury?

Or do you want (stability, might, protection, regeneration, condition cleansing, burst healing, blocks, blinds, and a stun break) x 2?

While OP gets it and understand the difference, I want to point out that warriors may not have a lot of blocks/blinds spread throughout the class and weapon skills, it does have access to a highly effective passive healing signet, good condition removal sources, large bouts of mobility to allow passive healing to tick, good refresh on evade dashes on greatsword, and a shield which blocks.

They have effective means of active defense, as well as “better?” (depends on who you talk to) healing, for self at least, and good condition removal.

Guard, well we like being told that we are special and can do things with less hp?

chaplain,

A lot of people, myself included, feel that Signet of Courage has too long of a tick refresh, and it would be better suited if it was 3-5 seconds instead of every 10 seconds. A lot of damage can happen in 10 seconds and having more health in smaller chunks returning back to you more frequently would be better suited. In addition to it’s tiny radius could stand to go up to maybe 600 / shout range.

Also it still retains a significantly long cast time for the full group heal, which sounds reasonable. Then you realize that the old tomes could be traited to innately provide stability AND increased your stats to provide you with “transformed” health, providing a larger sponge to soak up damage while standing still and channeling for 4+ seconds. As it is now it is too difficult to cast in times of need either

A) people or yourself will be dead by the time you cast it
B) easily interrupted unless blowing another utility for stability, causing even more investment and loss for little reward

I did use Tome of Courage extensively for large group WvW group fights, because being able to maintain a high degree of healing via Heal Area was effective and could push the tide of the war, especially with multiple guardians. NOT because of the full heal which rooted me and was more risk than reward.

Feel My Wrath is perfect….for PvE players. Because incoming damage is not typically an issue with high outgoing dps, easily manipulated fight mechanics, and dodging/blocking/blinding. So there is no real need for Renewed Focus, but it was typically taken in old PvE builds because locking yourself out of a dps rotation of weapon swaps was more negative than positive. Now PvE players have a fire and forget source of damage/group utility. The only thing PvE players used Tome of Wrath for was a precast haste then dropped it back for initial engagement of the fight.

PvP/WvW people are experimenting, but I personally did NOT take Tome of Wrath for the haste. I took Tome of Wrath for conflagrate and area denial/pressure. It surprised many groups of people to be bursted down from a single guard from range, and if you have multiple guards it stacked the effect on a point target.

Single target to target engagements, Tome of Wrath was negative because it locked you out of utility and weapon skills, thus the more survival oriented Renewed Focus was taken ~90% of the time.

Yet when you have Necro wells, Ranger Barrages, Warrior combustive shots and arching arrows, Ele firestorms, Engineer grenades, Thief cluster bombs, Mesmer chaos storms and shatters…..then you had the guardian who could maybe lay a staff symbol down or run into the center of battle and embrace the melee damage and maybe get themselves downed….OR you could take the book and contribute to the ranged point AE.

I admit I ~90% of the time did NOT use tomes, but when I did it was NOT for the effects that were given to us with the new shout and signet. So for me, the new tome replacements are a nice gesture, but I feel they missed the target with what tomes were used for, which explains why tomes continued to suck for so long. The devs didn’t understand their strengths and weaknesses, so they didn’t know how to balance and improve them to useable gameplay.

As a class, we retain a low health pool and not sustainable healing, thus we rely on burst healing and a lot of active defense to survive. Renewed Focus provided a lot to the active defense as well as feeding into our other class mechanic of virtues and group utility, so it made it a superior elite to take.

After the changes, I guess the PvE guys have a fun boon bot shout now for haste? We were not really hurting for crit chance/fury so that’s just a mindless bonus that no one really cares about.

For the rest of us, nothing has changed post tome removal.

Did four unranked runs with Thiefz’s symbol build and recorded it for study and proof of concept.

Thiefz.3695:

I have been running this for the last two months and have been discussing this build with Hollts for a bit.

http://gw2skills.net/editor/?vVAQNAR5dlsAhmhY5QwbIwPEHxDlNEu3HtGANQ9i7hkYLA-TpRHwADOCAFeAAs2fQwBBAwFA4YZAA

Unfortunately the first two are set at the wrong resolution, but enough of the screen should be visible for study and observation.

It performed well enough, but I don’t know if the damage is comparable in terms of threat and burst.

Healing via symbols is mostly unobserved I feel, and is just ancillary to the main objective, which is to provide AoE damage on a point.

Team support is hard for me to notice, but the immobilize on VoJ proved to be nice to lock down a kill as a group.

Overall I think it is a viable build that could be expanded upon. Maybe different sigils/runes?

For those interested they are listed below:

Test 1 (broken resolution, sorry)
http://www.twitch.tv/1cmf/c/6940171
Test 2 (broken resolution, sorry)
http://www.twitch.tv/1cmf/c/6940181
Test 3
http://www.twitch.tv/1cmf/c/6940336
Test 4
http://www.twitch.tv/1cmf/c/6940345

Thanks again Thiefz, I appreciate any and all theory crafters.

(man, resolution is grainy and pixelated…I really should find a new video cap software…but its free!)

https://obsproject.com/
twitch suggested this free vidcap software, looks better and runs better than xsplitter (previously suggested by twitch) and it’s all open source free!… thought I would throw it out there for anyone else who wanted to stream and didn’t know how to get started.

Recorded a couple of matches, I did horribly! BUT a couple of fights I think the build showed it’s potential as far as ability to sustain and fend off point caps and bunkers. Will archive on twitch when I can and highlight it.

…………………I got a new monitor and its a higher resolution…..capture software only recorded PART of my screen…..

Ok, I think I fixed myself Will stream a couple more games for better review.

Well, the positive side. I ran a couple of hotjoin matches just to test sustain, and it is comparable.

Not a true test, but I didn’t feel completely squishy. Probably due to the celestial stats.

I don’t feel the damage is there, but I did not get a good chance in the hotjoins I did to do anything significant.

I’m not the best player, but for science, I’ll stream some unranked matches with the build and see how it does. Will edit with twitch info after I set it up and then save the stream for later analysis.

http://www.twitch.tv/1cmf

Thiefz, I appreciate the honest effort and yes I will try out the build and not just ignore it and say things suck. Thank you for the contributions

I will ask, how do you think this fares in comparison with the more traditional condi burn builds as opposed to a hybrid celestial setup?

Also, lack of the typical sustain via mf or ah. Do you find it noticeable, or are symbol heals providing enough between heal cooldowns?

Thiefz.3695:

So let’s review something. Symbols give vuln AND burning when they pulse. Traited, that means you get 10% from the symbol, +7% against burning foes, plus whatever vulns you put down which is at least 1-2% . That means you can get about 20% increase in damage to people you can get in your symbol. Plus if you can stack burning (easy on a guard) you can join that with getting fury which means +20% crit chance. With GS5 plus wrath of justice you can nuke your opponent pretty easily.

For PvP, where people need to be on point, symbols are the counter to warriors. Against mesmers or Rangers is where you have issues.

Go ahead play it, film it, let us know how you like it. Please do report back

Ars Valde.8693:

Arken.3725:

Black Box.9312:

10% is pathetic for a grandmaster major trait. It needs to be at least 15%.

Still wouldn’t touch it at 15%(needs to be 20). Hell, even if this was 20% I probably wouldn’t use it due to how difficult it is to make a symbol build in spvp(You’d need Zeal, honor, valor).

Symbols aren’t something you build around, they’re a tool available to weapons with them. Shouts and Meditations are a line and build because of their universality, symbols will never be something more than an area control tool and damage source like any other ability weapons have.

Especially in a game heavily about mobility. You can use them for area control and punishment for fighting in tight spaces, but attempting to center a build around them rather than accepting them as a unique additional mechanic guardians have is, I feel, the wrong way to approach them.

I agree with you, they should contribute to area denial in pvp. Meaning they should be punishing if stood in, not easily laughed at and ran past. Would that mean they should do more damage? I’m sure no one wants to see that after what happened recently with the stacking bug, but a compromise in sustain and/or in damage to make them useful in mobile fights may be what they need.

Right now, even if you stand in a symbol it is not that bad. Necro wells work “well” because they can be layered on top of eachother to do stacking damage in a short duration of time. Guardian symbols tick at the same speed, but you can get 2 or 3 decent overlapping ticks, versus necro wells that have 3 damaging sources and additional ranged aoe ticking in unison, all contributing to burst damage.

At the moment necros “area denail” far better than the advertised frontline first in last out “punish the enemy for ground” guardian….

Symbol builds in pvp would need sustain.

healing symbols don’t do near enough, forcing us to rely on monks focus or altruistic healing if running as a tight group. So in essence, no one really pays attention to symbol heals at all.

sustain builds should have been: Symbol heals, AH heals, Meditation heals, cleric gear

Course now we have the potential to do:
Symbols + AH
Symbols + MF

AH and MF are “burst” healing sources though, and Symbols should have been “sustain” healing. Right now our only sustain is burst or full on clerics gear.

On average it seems that burning went from 1 stack for duration into 3 stacks in intensity. That said it may have provided 3 stacks per for 3 seconds, providing about 6 stacks on average and the 9th stack dropping off constantly.

Beyond that WW is prone to multi hit weaknesses, in tune of retaliation. In WvW retal is much more prominent, and getting in the “thick” of things can equal death on top of killing yourself with WW.

Tomes provided some range and averaged out ae target damage with strikes, so you would not kill yourself on retal and you would not be standing in the kill zone while “locked out of your skills”.

l2p? But too late now, its all gone cause people couldn’t see beyond their own nose.

edit:

Just mashing together numbers real quick, a single stack of burning in condition gear now does about 450 damage traited with increased burning damage. 6 stacks of burning would be doing about 2700 damage a second to 5 targets.

Conditions have an increased cap way past 25, so multiple guardians stacking the old tomes on a zerg could be doing stupid amount of damage. 5 guards averaging 6 stacks each would have been 13,500 damage a second to 5 targets….

Damage so stupid it would have been broken admittedly, which is probably what provoked the change of tomes in the first place.

Not because the devs had our interests in mind, but they wanted to remove something they were not interested in or capable of trying to balance, so they put a bandaid patch on it and called it good.

We got less because they were afraid of what we could do in the future…thats like an back to the future nerf :p

With how overpowered burning is right now, you guys would be sorely missing Tome of Wrath with that aoe burning spam on 1…imagine the mayhem and tears of all the melting people. THAT would have been burst dps on a cooldown, now its just a boon bot.

Yah we traded for a downgrade in damage, but gained pve group utility (pvp people tend to use renewed focus still, and signet of courage is meh).

Feel my Wrath is half the utility that tome of wrath was able to provide, which is simply haste on demand…i didn’t use tome of wrath for the haste though, and i dont think many did except for very small percentages of the dungeon crowd.

Signet of Courage is all the bad of tome of courage without any of the good, long cast time interrupt-able full heal. Yet you don’t gain stability when traited, you dont get increased stats when in “tome form” to soak up more damage while trying to channel it, and you don’t get an aoe heal spam on the 1 key.

I see the signet and shout as subpar potential to what the tomes “could” have been if they were tweeked more.

Well, that is assuming that the mobs do not attack while moving out of aoe. An additional argument could be added to say, only move out of ground aoe if “dodge” available.

This way if players blow all the damage at once, and the mob has a dodge available, the players wasted dps. baiting a dodge or two out first OR immobilizing the target first would maximize damage done.

Additionally, mobs could block, heal, blind while in aoe. Or some mobs could be enraged while in ground aoe, so that while they take more damage, they will also DO more damage while in the aoe or maybe mobs can’t be blocked or avoided while in aoe…which may discourage mindless spamming of ground target aoe, yet encourage intelligent setup by players and coordination.

There are a lot of creative things that can happen beyond just “players put damage down…mob avoids damage”.

Question is, can we layer our own symbols to gain a 20% modifier for a short burst…or is it a flat 10%? I’m fine with it not stacking with others because that was broken, but self stacking was interesting.

Inculpatus cedo.9234:

I have been waiting for someone to create a thread about this.

I think the new Level-up Rewards windows are great! Lots of information, and a much better sneak peek at what’s coming up.

I will never understand why ‘clicking’ is considered hard work, though. But, that’s just me.

Great job, Devs! I like it! =)

Wait…what? Why would you be waiting anxiously for someone to make a thread for the pure intent of disagreeing with them? I mean voicing an opinion is fine but motive is sketchy….

Yeah…you’re right….traps are a dumb idea

Knocking people off a “point” is well known, to include shadow refuge and spvp point caps.

Pushing people over cliffs also is entertaining, but it is a short lived reward sacrificed for other better mechanics.

Glad you enjoy it, but I’m looking for something better.

Honestly, it looks fun and not over the top.

The quick re-occurrence of the killshot and potential crits scare me and I think it could use maybe a longer cooldown possibly. Also the potential to have a “firing squad” of multiple warriors is really scary.

But it has it’s limitations and counter play with projectile blocks and dodges so I don’t mind it too much. Kind of inspires me to want to try a warrior again.

At first I would say I think they did that so you couldn’t have consistent fury/swiftness/might every pet swap. Then I noticed Zypher’s Speed provides quickness/3x might every swap, so that seems inconsistent. Albiet, those boons provided by Zypher’s Speed are limited by duration.

I think a compromise would be to bring Clarion Bond down to 15 second internal cooldown (basically remove the cooldown) and then reduce fury and swiftness duration to 3-5 seconds (maybe bump swiftness to 10 seconds)? Might seems reasonable to keep at 15 to synergize with Zypher’s Speed might on pet swap.

This way you have control over your boon application and a satisfying return on intelligent pet swapping without providing perma fury/might/swiftness without thought.

Some trait and skill synergies are seemingly a no brainer to go together, then you find that they are broken out of sync when taken together because cooldowns change and do not match up together.

Communal Defense + Invigorated Bulwark
I understand the need to buffer the outgoing healing/damage that can be applied by Communal Defense to a group of players. Innately that occurrence of aegis application would be limited by cooldowns, save for the healing skill, shelter.

Beyond that Mace was the seemingly best choice to go with Communal Defense as it provided the most consistent blocking and a decent refresh of cooldown. Yet now there is a 15 second cooldown to Communal Defense, and if you take Invigorated Bulwark it will not trigger on mace every rotation, as mace protector’s strike changes from 15 seconds to 12 second cooldown.

Adjust Communal Defense to have a 1-3 second internal cooldown to allow steady application of group aegis on intelligent usage of guardian blocking mechanics. Otherwise the skill provides little to no benefit to take and is a broken synergy.

Wrath of Justice + Virtue of Justice
I’m astonished at this one, Wrath of Justice’s sole purpose is to synergize with Virtue of Justice. Previously Virtue of Justice had a 30 second cooldown untraited, now it has an innate 25 second cooldown (and somehow a 21.25 second cooldown when virtues is a selected trait line).

This simply does not work with Virtue of Justice at all. I “think” I understand the want to limit successive immobilize stacking done by a group or repeated aoe kills refreshing Virtue of Justice on kills….but 30 seconds is a huge buffer of saefty against those two things from happening.

Again, lower the internal cooldown for Wrath of Justice to about 1-3 seconds (5-10 would even be acceptable if they are that afraid of quick successive procs from this trait). At least make it work on a baseline usage of the centralized guardian mechanic….virtues.

Rune of Resistance + Perfect Inscriptions
This one is less specific to guardians, but still has a limiting factor. Rune of Resistance applies aegis on signet activation with a 30 second cooldown. Baseline the fastest signet cooldown is 20 seconds for elementalists, 25 seconds for warrior, and 30 seconds for guardian, thief, necromancer, and mesmer, and ranger (sorry engineers, no signet for you).

Traited, the fastest signet cooldown is 16 seconds. I understand the fear of being able to proc multiple aegis applications in quick succession, yet at most people would be able to proc 4-5 signets, be out of passive abilities for a significant amount of time and then become vulnerable after blowing all of their cooldowns.

This rune become useless if any traits with seeming synergy are taken together with it.

I understand that the developers are trying to curtail overpowered effects or simply do not understand the synergistic application of multiple skills/traits/runes/sigils taken together and did not foresee the severe limiting factors.

Bottom line, there are a lot of things that punish and discourage you for traiting into a gameplay style and using skills and traits together, so much so that only few “builds” work and it creates less build diversity. Nothing should encourage players to do “less” with their builds in order to make mechanics work.

I am sure there are more broken synergies that I do not even realize, and far more beyond the guardian class. Share if you have more!

Apparently Guardian, Necromancer, and Mesmer are the only classes that have class mechanics embedded in their weapon skills. Symbols, Marks, Clones/Phantasms.

So the question is do Necros and Mesmers feel the same traitline restrictions as Guardians when selecting traits and weapons?

I feel that Mesmers mostly are unaffected because every weapon set has a Phantasm and/or Clone attached to it.

Necromancers and Guardians have had very similar class mechanic issues on sustain/mobility and the want of effective build diversity (necros wanted a power build for a while but condi was always better and guard wanted a condi build but power was better).

I feel that the Zeal line solution could be in allowing more proliferation of symbol usage across the weapon spread….but I would hate to see SO MANY light fields just strewn everywhere.

Symbols tend to be boring mechanics, that the Guardians are “known” for and expected to use as they are found on every weapon except for sword and scepter. Yet they are only efficient on hammer and mace.

Marks are a very minor part of Necromancers and are only found on one weapon, so they probably don’t care all too much about them. Wells are the known mechanic for Necromancers, I feel, and are easily obtained on any build because they are utility skills.

So the other solution would be to transfer symbols into utility skills…maybe drop spirit weapons and move them into very short duration procs on weapon skills, in a way sort of like clones and phantasms?

End of the day, symbols could use a buff or alteration to mechanics…even after the mayhem of the symbol stacking bug abuse, it shows how linear and limited they are. Best usage is on a stationary target that will soak up the full extent of damage.

Great post Starlinvf,

You kind of reaffirmed an “ah hah!” moment for me from prior video games. While I am under the firm understanding and concurrence that there are no “tanks” in this game. Self survival is still a key department of concern.

starlinvf.1358:

…
Thats where Vit comes in. Its an HP buffer that lets you soak a few seconds of condi stacks, or keep you alive between some of your cool downs. You really don’t need a lot… but based on several hybrid builds prior to the update, 15k Health is actually enough to absorb bleed over damage from your defenses; and is easily refilled through your healing link traits. Thats about ~350 Vit over your base which you can gain pretty easily with most gear that includes toughness.
…

In your above comment, it re-occurred to me that you only need enough vitality to take a hit. After that the replenishment of life and mitigation of damage prevail and bring the needed vitality requirement down.

That said, a good measure of how much life you need would be how much life can you replenish and how long would it take to have those heals up again.

So if you anticipate incoming damage to come in bursts of 5k every 10 seconds you need at least 5,001 hp to survive.

You additionally need to heal at least 5k every 10 seconds to maintain after survival and/or have enough HP as a buffer to survive until additional heals are available.

So if you have 20k health, but can only heal 5k every 10 seconds, the additional 15k is simply a buffer and could be replaced/mixed with additional mitigation systems such as dodges/blocks/heals.

This is less helpful here in GW2 because incoming damage and outgoing healing will never be on par with each other, in circumventing the trinity development. Still good theory crafting thinking to help spread stats out effectively.

Classic case of form versus function.

I preferred the old roman numerals because it was functional and easy to disseminate to others what traits/build I was using.

Now it is flashy and pretty, but less functional. I tend to be minimalistic though, so my opinion probably differs from the majority as well as the devs who unveiled it who seem to like the art.