Guild Wars 2

Honestly A-net would could solve so many hassles just by going back to the guild wars 1 system where they had separate versions of skills for pvp and pve. Expecting all skills to function the same at the same level of balance in two completely different types of gameplay is pure insanity.

With that said my personal changes would be to the shield as it seems to be the main source of many guardians frustrations.

Shield

Shield of Judgement: Completely remove this skill from the shield, switch it to the focus and give the shield the ‘Shield of Wrath’ instead. (plus it fits with the other focus skill ‘ray of judgement’ and just makes more sense)

Reasoning: Currently the shield is the if not one of the most useless items any guardian could have. It focuses less on defense and more on buffing your team, something you would think is completely backwards. Giving it to the focus would allow the focus to become more of a ‘support wand’ type weapon while making the shield a defensive style choice. It makes sense.

Balance changes:

Shield of Wrath:
Cooldown reduced from 45 seconds to 24 seconds in pve. This is unchanged for pvp.

Shield of Absorption:
Duration increased to 4 seconds with cooldown reduced to 24 seconds. This is unchanged for pvp.

Reasoning: Guardians currently aren’t really a ‘Guardian’ in any stretch of the word. Due to the lack of trinity, weak support gear and long cooldowns there is no real protection element to this game besides stacking buffs with shouts, which as anyone can tell you is not very engaging. Reducing the cooldown of meaningful blocks not only allows the player to be more engaged in whats happening but also feel as if they have actual options in combat rather than sticking to a rotation. Using a proper shield of absorption in the right place could be a life saver to your team or yourself and when encountering an enemy threat blocking it should be an option for Guardians currently we; the armored defenders of the world, spend more time rolling in the dirt to avoid an attack rather than standing up to face the enemy like one would expect from a class titled the ‘guardian’.

Look guys, I realize balancing for pvp is difficult. But we don’t need to attempt to balance the game in such a way that your pvp experience should be the same as your pve one. Some skills which have no business having long cooldowns have incredibly large ones simply for the reason they would be too powerful in pvp otherwise, and the pve content suffers for it and becomes stale.

While unrelated to that odd bug (I haven’t noticed that one yet)I think the real problem with Aegis is simply how useless it is. Having a one hit shield protection doesn’t help much if your in the thick of things, and most large attacks are so telegraphed we just roll out of the way regardless. Best case scenario is having what 3 blocks total before your burnt out that all have 40+ second cooldowns? In order to make maximum uses o your aegis you have to play a certain way that involves completely rethinking how your skill priority should work for very little gain in return. And then if there is an issue such as you described its uselessness is multiplied tenfold.

I actually was considering blowing my first paycheck on some gems to give my guardian the primeval skin but now I don’t even want to play him because my playstyle is completely messed up after 2 months. Greatswords can’t be used in a damaging fashion as a large chunk of that was lost with the nerf to the symbol up-times and combo field viability, and now they can’t be used as a decent support tool either for the same reason. Until they fix some issues with guardians I think i am just going back to borderlands and dishonored for awhile. I love the exploration in this game but the combat just doesn’t feel nearly as active now when so many guardian skills have long cooldowns (I don’t even want to talk about how bad the shield skills are)

Because of the symbol nerf I either have to shelve my greatsword or my symbol traits, both of which I love :’( it was a fun playstyle and I enjoyed it. If retaliation being up often in pvp was a problem why did they not simply nerf the amount of damage retaliation reflect rather than symbol of wrath? Because I am not sure if you guys have noticed but we have plenty more skills that could be sued to keep retaliation up other than SoW, or better yet change SoW in pvp and keep its pve variant as it was before.

@ sinos: Having weapon switching combos was an advertised feature of the game. It was meant to be a way to reward players for playing in certain playstyles and combining different weapon set together, there are strengths and weaknesses to all of them (namely being in complete melee range 100% of the time for hammer/gs)

I agree that the cooldowns on some of our skills (especially shield skills) is a little hefty for what they offer and it really slow us down. We just kinda stand there and look pretty a lot of the time between cooldowns and it is pretty irritating. I love the class but I will be the first to admit it needs some work

I agree with the above comments. Can we get some kind of statement on this? I get you guys are working hard on the game but putting out a two sentence response won’t take that long and would at least give us an idea on whether or not the devs are taking our opinion into consideration in all this.

I would rather have Anet just completely remove retaliation from symbol of wrath rather than messing with the cooldown and rotation like they did. Not only are they nerfing the only boon a greatsword user can rely on to make their enemies think before attacking, but they also messed up a large amount of symbol based traits.

I completely agree that skills should have PvE and PvP versions. This would allow the devs to work on balancing pvp without harming the PvE experience

Point clicking is so irritating, I honestly can’t believe someone missed it at all. To each their own.

This post completely outlines a great deal of the issues regarding the greatsword. You sir are both a gentleman and a scholar and I wish you well in the effort to get anet to fix our class.

changing the order of the skills two months in really messed up everyones comfort level when it comes to playing their class. Not only that but it really screwed up the effectiveness of a large portion of our traits

I seriously don’t understand why they don’t just make separate changes for PvE and PvP like they did in guild wars 1. If there is a problem with a skill in pvp, change it in pvp! don’t let that ruin the experience for PvE also

I completely agree with animus. Guardian just feels boring now sitting there waiting for my cooldowns to go off. I mean at first it wasn’t so bad knowing it was only 10 seconds before I could go on a spinning rampage again but now I feel like the greatsword isn’t even a viable build anymore. Quite a few of our power traits are heavily focused on greatsword and symbol use and now we just lost a large portion of our damage. We lost a large chunk of our damage with the symbol change, now not only do we have way less health than warriors but our damage has 0 chance to possibly compete with just one hundred blades cast.

Also @ Gisei; I have no idea what you are referring to sir, animus’ post was well thought out and explained his point clearly. We are all worried about the viability of our class in guild wars and having anet ignore the issue will not help in the slightest. We are not just some entitled bunch of whiners trying to get our way, we are gamers trying to get the most fun experience from the game that we can, and standing still auto-attacking is not fun.

This is the most annoying this of all time. They completely screwed with months worth of muscle memory. You didn’t have to rearrange the skills anet. Also give leap of faith a slightly smaller cooldown did not help at all. We have still lost a large junk of our viability in PvE (really don’t act like this was a pvp nerf, if people are stupid enough to stand in the symbol or fire everythign at us while it was up, they deserved it).

My recommendiations;

A: reduce the cooldown of whirling wrath to partially make up for the large amount for damage we just lost
B: Reduce the cd of leap of faith even further
C: change it back

for what shields offer the cooldowns are waaaay to high. Even when you get the shield cd reduction you will find that your shield arm is simply dead weight most of the time. If he cooldowns were lower we could have a much larger role in wvw in the sense that we could protect allies from attackers on the walls and be much more helpful overall. As it is now we may as well just all grab greatswords because that 6 seconds of being helpful isn’t worth the 40 seconds you aren’t.

Its not just about the bosses though, in most situation the bosses are completely tame in comparison to the pain in the kitten trash. If you do not have a team comp specifically built for the dungeon it will simply not work half the time, it really restricts the what players are allowed to do at all. Bosses issues are almost always a simple l2p isssue, figure out the tactics, counter it, end of story. But when it comes to overbearing trash mobs things just feel wrong, 5 famous heroes should not have to blow every cc or weakening effect of a a single trash mob in order to kill it. It should not take 2 minutes for this 5v1 to focus down a single normal enemy, especially when said enemy can one-shot most squishy characters easily while still taking hits from everyone else like it was nothing. It just makes it a very long, drawn-out and tedious process.

The bosses are not a problem in the least, anyone with a basic understanding of tactics will know to avoid boss AoEs and watch out for the heavy hitting skills as well as be accustomed to figuring out special boss tactics (such as seperating the lovers) the real problem is the trash mobs, attempting to do this with a team that just uses their own preferred build will often get you killed, it develops to a harsh meta due to the immense amount of hp and damage the trash mobs have, forcing people to build certain ways and bring very specific skills or you may as well give up. Really it seems that with how much damage mobs do, and how much health they have, ac feels like it was designed with the holy trinity in mind for some reason. It gets annoying when as a melee class you realize you would be a much better contribution to the team if you had picked ranged and kited with everyone else, hell even with everyone on the team focusing down an enemy it can take around two minutes to kill (not to mention it can most likely one-shot your squishies) and that isn’t fun, it isn’t exciting, its just tedious.

I actually love underwater combat and exploration and found it was something that was done rather well.

I have a ton of fun with my guardian

I am loving the armor so far. I mean at first when my only choices were chain, ringmail or scale I was bored with it quickly, however once you get to around 30+ you can start finding plenty of new looks to keep you busy. Personally I am loving banded armor at the moment.

I thought our low hp pool was kind of ridiculous. Why not just make us have more base vitality and scaling than the squishy classes but still less than the warrior? Warrior still have more damage and health, but we get more toughness and block skills.

I’m glad this thread had so many responses Moar!

“There is no tank there so you can spec “leet deeps” and not have to worry about survivability.”

I recall hearing this exact same thing beforehand but I can’t recall where. Was this in an interview or an article or something?

But yeah I think that the main complaint when it comes to dungeons doesn’t come from the fact trash mobs do a lot of damage, that’s understandable (in ac the acalonians rangers and elementalist case) but I think it comes from the fact they have such an extreme amount of hp while doing so much damage, in a group of 2 rangers and a fighter most groups with half a brain decide to target the rangers first, well focusing down an enemy like that would be a good idea if it actually felt like we were focusing them down at all. As it is a group doing the dungeon at the reccomended level (30 for story, 35 for explore) have almost no chance of completing it due to the lack of traits and stat bonuses, for each time I HAVE completed ac explorable it came mostly from a level 80 warrior or guardian spec’d fully out in Vitality and Toughness being able to take 5 more hits than the rest of us.

It seems kind of ridiculous that it takes 5 famous heroes to take down one trash mob, and even then it takes them like 2 minutes of skill spamming for one guy.

Also I get it is supposed to be our dungeon and our story and everything but could we please buff the heroes of destiny’s edge to make them not COMPLETELY useless? You expect me to believe rytlock and caithe defeated dragonspawn attacking once every twelve seconds and then dying over and over?

I honestly kind of feel the same. I love PvE and it has always been my thing, and I have loved every seconds of the normal PvE environment in guild wars. However the dungeons always leave a horrible feeling in the pit of my stomach afterwords. Just the immense feeling that something is horribly wrong.

In WoW I always felt the dungeons were supposed to be a fun experience for loot and challenge, however in guild wars I always feel that the dungeons are unrealistically brutal I mean the trash mobs are supposed to have either high health (fighter types) or high damage (casters and rangers) NOT BOTH for each. It shouldn’t take us all two minutes of focusing one trash mob just to kill him while he can one-shot the squishies in the party. It feels like the game was designed with tanks and healers in mind, I mean if we could tank the hits an heal through enemy bursts, while pulling aggro off the squishies the high amount of damage and health wouldn’t seem so overwhelming.

My suggestion if we are keeping the current system? Nerf all trash mob hp by about 20%, then maybe it wouldn’t be so overwhelming and would make dungeons fun instead of a chore

I am actually loving the game right now despite the differences between it and gw1, really the only things I would like to see are:

1: Less brutal dungeons, instances are meant to be something people do for fun and loot with their friends, as it is right now I can see certain one (cough cough AC) devolving into a harsh meta for what is and isn’t going to work at all. I have no problem with the idea of no tanks or healers but for pete’s sake can we nerf the hp on enemy trash mobs a bit? It is seems ridiculous they can one shot non-armored classes and than survive all 5 players throwing everything at them for two minutes. Either give them high health or high damage NOT BOTH, I mean really you know something wrong when getting to the boss is when you take a sigh of relief.

2: More skills, look I can get wanting to keep pvp balanced and have everyone know for certain what they are facing (for instance, see an enemy guardian coming at you with a greatsword, you can tell what he is going to do and prepare for it) but the fact of the fact of the matter is casting the same 5 skills over and over can get a little dull, maybe make it so one or tow skills are interchangeable with others

I love the exploration in this game so much

I fine the system to be fine as it is while I am leveling, I am just taking my time questing and exploring the rich world anet set up for us and that is pretty fun. I find leveling to be fine the way it is, with how the system is set up a player can basically focus on whatever they want to level without losing much time allowing players to pursue their own interests (exploring, crafting, randomly walking in on events, dungeon diving etc) and I like that.

I guess when it comes to endgame though I can see a problem with not having much to do but the same can be said for any mmo. Once you reach the end of the game there just isn’t much to do anymore. It’s just kind of how things are until new content is released xD

As a guardian, two skills always on Logan’s utility bar are
1: “Retreat!”
2: “Save Yourselves!”

So it would appear that a few of my friends have started a trend amongst my group of making up new jokes involving Logan Thackery fleeing. Personally I think the guy is awesome but some of them can be pretty funny. So I am curious to see what jokes the rest of the community can come up with.

Example:
1: If Logan Thackey was a character in league of legends, each one of his skills would be “recall”

2: The reason there are no mounts in the game is because it would only make Logan run away faster.

3: The number one character Logan visits isn’t Jennah, but the ‘speed boons’ npc

I really enjoy the fact there is no mounts of encourage people speeding through the entire map, take your time and enjoy the what the game has to offer and explore

Yes please. It just aggravates me when I play a fantasy game with no cloaks in it

You forgot the ability to preview items in the trading post

I usually get a few silver just fine selling junk I get off mobs

Honestly I like the idea of some classes being able to infiltrate a bases defenses, that way it would give the defenders on the wall something to watch for and give melee classes a purpose in wvw.

Kind of a cool idea, not sure how easy it would be to balance though.

I feel that the main weakness of our class is our low hp pool, we can do massive damage with greatswords or hammers in pvp but nowhere near as high as a warrior with nowhere near the hp. I thought we were supposed to be some sort of magic knight hybrid? So why do we not have a happy in between when it comes to base vitality?

I think renewed focus is useless in most situation but that is about it.

when defending while using a greatsword, jump off the wall and spin with whirling wrath amongst the enemy horde while moving back towards the door, go inside, repeat.

I can see a few of your points bu some of them just seem like whining for whining sake. Reduce the amount of item tiers? Really? How it that a big deal? What is wrong with the current combat font?

I agree on alliances and the fact some skills need to be seriously buffed/redone but that is about it

I have never had this issue in the least.

I agree with this, maybe they could make it similar to utility skills where you could swap a few shield skills out to focus on an aggressive or defensive style. Or maybe just make a dedicated blocking skill for guardians shield.

Sadly avatar of melandru and reaper of grenth are pretty terrible skills and I rgret spending the points on them.

I think the shield cooldowns need to be reduced slightly. It feels ridiculous to just walk around waiting for my cooldowns to pop and doing nothing with my shield arm.

I don’t have any problem with the books, stop salvaging for a while and start selling the junk you get, I get around 1.2 silver per weapon or armor piece I sell so not that bad at all.

I feel like no one ever has a chance to appreciate the beautiful environments in games like wow because of the mounts, I enjoy the feeling of adventure in guild wars when traveling so I vote no.

I completely agree with this. I love the world the game designers have crafted but something I would love to do is really interact with it. Let us sit down in chairs or at tables in taverns and things of this nature. Just imagine spinning tales of adventure with your friend in the tavern and planning your next course of action.

I agree with MRA. The power well controlled servers would obviously have this camped in some method or another. It would be like the jumping puzzle where you have 30 evil villains chilling on the traps to make everyones life hell.

I think it is fine the way it is. After all all you really need is to pick your favorites dyes and them buy them off the trading post for your new character. I did the same with country blue dye

I agree with this 100x over.

Snoring Sleepwalker.9073:

It’s a good idea. In fact, I do remember someone asking about 2 handed axes during one BWE and someone from ANET said that they were saving them for an expansion.

Also, I’d like ANET to add scythes at some point.

With the death of dervishes I don’t think scythes are really making a comeback. I would love it if they did but it seems they sort of handed out the dervishes avatar states to the humans and the scythe animations to the necromancers. I would love 2handed axes and scythes to be in game though