Guild Wars 2

SrebX.6498:

That’s actually awful, I doubt the pvp meta Medi Guardian build will be viable anymore.
Also pretty much any build on any game mode that doesn’t use vit gear would be worthless. Except maybe pve zerker meta

I don’t think that’s true. The berserker’s amulet gave vitality, so we’re really only trading a bit of toughness for some more hp.

Outside of PvP it shouldn’t be too hard to exchange a few accessories to get the stat combination you want.

Yeah I think Phantaram is your best bet. You can expect like a 40-60 split between medi guard and burst ele stream time.

FMW is going to be one of the strongest skills in the game. It would still be amazingly strong with twice the cooldown. There’s no reason it needs to be good for bunkers just because it’s a shout, and there’s little reason to compare it to timewarp which has 6x the cooldown. Timewarp might be slightly better in some of the longer fights, but the fact that you can cast FMW twice in the really long fights and then cast it again in the next fight makes it significantly better than the slow effect.

They’re increasing the stats of gear to make up for that loss.

Black Box.9312:

DrPhro.5976:

I don’t get what’s with all the symbol hate. Symbols are fine in PvE where all the action typically happens in one spot, and even in PvP the bigger symbols trait allows you to apply a bunch of on-point pressure. I could understand these complaints more if our class was ranger or mesmer, but guards like to be in the fray and fighting on or near the point, even with the zerker builds.

The idea is that people want the Guardian to be viable outside of conquest, because not everyone likes conquest and it’s a kittenty mode to base your entire class balance on.

I think that’s putting the cart before the horse. Stronghold hasn’t even been released yet, and either dragon hunter or a supportive guard look like they’ll do just fine in that game mode. If you’re talking about WvW roaming then that’s something I have less experience with.

I don’t get what’s with all the symbol hate. Symbols are fine in PvE where all the action typically happens in one spot, and even in PvP the bigger symbols trait allows you to apply a bunch of on-point pressure. I could understand these complaints more if our class was ranger or mesmer, but guards like to be in the fray and fighting on or near the point, even with the zerker builds.

I agree that that shield shouldn’t have blocks. It might feel weird that focus is the block weapon, but that can’t be changed now and giving the same utility to both weapons is redundant. To me, this is a good opportunity to give the shield one of the new effects. Both resistance and taunt seem like reasonable additions, though I’m not sure how I’d implement them.

brannigan.9831:

Ragnarox.9601:

Longbow was needed.

Sadly traps not.

We are in a good place – that means we must get 1 good thing and 1 bad thing – that is called balance (for guardians only).

No guardians are not in a good place where pvp is concerned at least unless you want to be shoe horned into hammer meditation. We’ll see is specializations change that and give more then one meta build.

Just because you don’t like the current meta build doesn’t mean Guards are in a bad spot. Not every build has to be viable at the same time.

I’m very happy with the guardian changes, both for PvP and PvE. Glacial heart seems pretty out of place in virtues and I’ll miss it, but otherwise I’m really excited to play as guardian right now.

I don’t know how much of a problem this actually is, but my main concern is with the skill empower itself. It has a 2.5s cast time which can take a lot away from dps if you plan to keep it up and it leaves you quite vulnerable. Also, a 600 radius can be pretty inconsistent in a pug. I feel that if you were organized enough to keep it useful then you’d be organized enough to just throw down a fire field. Out of personal curiosity can you show the math that says 10 more in zeal is only 1% off from the 25 in radiance? It seems unlikely that it could make up for radiant power and the 14% crit chance, and i’m sure it leaves out the additional might and vuln from VoJ (but I understand why that’d be left out of a calc.) In any case it looks like it plays intuitively which is a plus for players trying to branch out, and the information is segmented nicely so it’s easy to follow your points.

I don’t know about after the patch, but before it was estimated that you’d need ~980 AR to get past jade maw at 50. I don’t know if that kept increasing at 60-80, but that was the wall we faced. Currently, I heard the new infusions maxed out at +10 meaning the most you can get is 70 AR, so aiming for that high number is irrelevant anyway.

People don’t like her because it’s bad writing. There’s no mystery. Nothing is unexpected. She’s not exactly hindering us. Worst of all it doesn’t feel like anything we do matters, which is especially important in a game story.
It’s not uncommon for a villain to be behind everything or to always have a way out, but usually that’s because of their superior strategy, or meticulous planning. As others have said scarlet is basically a god. Whenever we disrupt something we find out it doesn’t matter. If she’s just stalling for time why didn’t she just stay hidden? Whenever she’s cornered she escapes just because she can. If she’s really that powerful why doesn’t she just do what she wanted and be done with it? She already told us these plans weren’t that important to her, so If she’s trying to be evil why doesn’t she do something important like attack the priory/vigil/order? It wouldn’t be hard with her intellect and strength. Instead all she does is take credit for things that could have happened anyway and it’s just annoying.

This had to be expected. It was easily the most asked question on this forum and they never addressed it.

There are a lot of weird things going on with fractals right now. That doesn’t make the “cattle prod” right and I’m not sure what their end goal looks like, but it seems hasty to judge the game on something that’s currently so unstable.

Yeah, start out with buying knights. It’ll help you adjust to a more offensive set. Then you can run CoF for your berserker’s gear. You wont look original but you’ll have what you need. Get them as you can, though shoulders, chest, and legs offer the best stats. It’s probably not worth saving up the tokens to get them first, but if it costs the same in gold those are the ones you should prioritize.

While I like the idea of a spirit bow kind of thing I really want a physical projectile. It’s the only combo finisher we’re missing and I think it would work well with all of our light fields to self cleanse conditions.

I agree with Carlos for the most part. To me, the karma and Arah armor that a lot of people are running around with just look silly. That said, if I had a rarer skin like The Crossing or the ghastly grinning shield I’d probably follow up on that look. Back to great swords, the Corrupted Avenger, the Arah great sword, and the Crystal Guardian are close to the color of the normal guardian projectiles and can fit a spiky theme.

There’s a good chance that anyone who cares is already aware, but it looks like someone bought up all the molten jetpacks to try and raise the price. There were six available at around 250g, then 0, then 3 at 750g. I don’t really care about the manipulation; I was just wondering what’s the best course of action for the people who still do have supply left?

-Should you try and undercut him knowing that the buyer still has up to 3 left?
-Should you price it a couple hundred gold lower but still above the previous price in the hope that he buys yours too?
-Should you just wait until that price becomes the new standard and sit on yours a little longer?
-Or something else entirely?

I don’t have the power to affect anything that’s going on here. I just wanted to open this up as a case study and get some advice from the trading post gurus here.

UPDATE: looks like someone already made the first move and undercut him at 725g

Edit: Obviously I was tired last night because there are some clear mistakes I made in the information. First, there was only 1 listed at 750g. Second, the price had been hovering around 360g for the day before this happened. It looks like they were being bought up steadily, but by my count there were still 3 left before the last purchase. (Somewhat to my defense but also very relevant to this is that a day before it was around 250g and 6 left)

A 0/30/30/5/5 meditations build gets you good sustainable healing and can work with some valkyrie gear for more vitality. It has very little support though so you’re kinda playing for yourself.

Well I personally don’t feel comfortable without 5 in honor, but the lost vigor can be made up with food and sigils of energy. I’m also not sure what you planned on using the torch for, but focus is almost always the better option, because the blind/regen help so much in keeping your team’s health up. Whether it’s for the second guard who decided to face tank, or making sure that the warrior up front has enough health for his scholar runes, and the emergency block is invaluable. Finally, I don’t really know what you mean by being far away, but if you plan to keep your distance you’re going to miss out on a lot of the VoJ synergies. It’s not bad, just something to keep in mind.
Overall, I can see where you’re trying to go with this, but it’s really up to you how well you do with it.
P.S. You might want to consider consecrated ground. I think it’s pretty underrated, but being able to place consecrations is a huge boost to their utility and can ease the pain on their longer cooldowns.

Healway is pretty rough in pve since it relies on two things: that there are people near you, and they can benefit from the passive heals. A lot of bosses have you spread out so much that you wont be able to dodge near your party mates, or you need to stack up on them so you can’t dodge, and as akamon pointed out against the ones who can one shot you the passive healing is pretty much useless. If you want to go the support route in pve the anchor or the hammer build are your best bets.

Because no one has mentioned it yet, it’s important to note that zerker guards to pretty poorly in wvw. The leading build is called healway and traits 0/0/10/30/30 with full cleric’s gear. It’s a lot more supporty and may be more along the lines of what you were expecting for a guard, but you certainly won’t be breaking any PvE records with it

here’s a video, but i’m pretty sure this guy took some liberties with the build so you might want to look up the original thread.

Poweful Blades- I just don’t think this is an area that needs attention. Anyone would appreciate the buff, but I’m sure everyone would rather get a buff elsewhere given the choice.

Zeal- Move two handed mastery here. Honor has plenty of good traits to fill its place, and damage builds would probably like to consolidate their trait lines. The various spirit weapon traits should also be here. Even if they don’t get used immediately it’ll still open up that option a little more.

Currently we’re stretched too thin on a lot of fronts. To do any one job we need two trait lines, and dual purpose guardians can take as many as four. Reorganizing trait lines, is a simple solution that can show pretty dramatic results, and lay a more solid groundwork for future changes.

SoS- Let’s just put some numbers on this: 20s of swiftness if you stay the whole time. 15s because it runs out while waiting for the 5 ticks. Swiftness gives you a 33% boost to speed, meaning 15s of running with swiftness equals 20s of normal running. That’s the exact same as spending the 15s running without swiftness +5s you don’t have to spend waiting in the symbol. I’m sure that we all knew this internally, but it’s good to have it fleshed out.
tl;dr SoS is pretty much worthless.

Kindled Zeal- I think there are two routes to go with this.
1) Survivability, if applying burning removed a condition or lowered their duration, this would be a great gain and truly worthy of a grand master trait. Guardians are already lacking in roaming potential, so adding some durability to offensive variants would be a nice compromise without straying from the slow melee theme, though I can see how this might be too hard to manage.
2) Adding another condition while burning, similar to blind exposure. I like the idea of adding torment because it fits anet’s view of the guardian just staying still and duking it out. This is important, because no matter how powerful your burn it’s still only one condition that can be easily removed. This would at least give the burning a buffer, and provide more utility to a party since torment stacks. (I’m still open to ideas of other conditions though)