Guild Wars 2

(Can’t hear me on vent.)

Here is a video of a Kohler fight. It consist of myself, a mesmer (my partner in crime who was laughing on vent about doing no damage), and three pickups; two warriors and an elementalist. Normally when I fight Kohler I use specter/focus instead of staff and change other traits and skills around. But for this fight the only thing I changed was the Signet of Judgement for ‘Retreat’. I thought I started the video at the very beginning of the fight. Right before the video started I went down once, twas bested by the mesmer adds, was revived, and the video pretty much picks up from there. After the two adds was defeated, the fight took a slightly over two minutes to defeat an isolated Kohler.

In a non-sterile environment, I was only able to maintain about 4 stacks of might from attacks vs. the 7 from the Target Golems in the mist. The primary damage dealers were the two warriors and the elementalist. I am going to focus on the two warriors as they were the two who remained to melee Kohler constantly.

-Both Warriors went full signets during the fight. Neither used Signet of Justice as a direct heal during the fight.

-The Warriors, mostly the 1st one, was able to maintain about 5-7 stacks of might own their own. After I started my support they were maintaining the maximum (25 stacks) with little trouble.

-The Warriors maintained protection boon through 90% of the fight.

-Our Mesmer was useless, and I am going to get him to read this so I can laugh at him.

-All sources of regeneration boon came from me

-Notice at 01:16 the health bars of the warriors; Staff with Empowering Might + Virtue of Resolve Active.

Here’s another tip that might seem obvious to some people, but certainly caught me by surprise.

If you’re coming from WoW, you may assume that Blue gear is better than Green gear, because that’s the way it works in WoW.

Wrong. In GW2, it’s the opposite. Green gear is better than Blue gear. Especially important when buying from Heart vendors for Karma, because they usually offer Green and Blue versions of the same gear.

Cheers.

Calling a 10-foot high mound of dirt a mountain doesn’t make it a mountain.

There is always a crowd of people saying Game X is dying/dead. I looked up the websites of some of those dead games last month, there were updates about new patches and new content. Obviously there are people still playing the games and people still spending money on them, or the servers would have shut down.

A handful of games have shut down, for various reasons not always because of lack of players. What’s the latest game to shut down, City of Heroes or somesuch? It seems to still have a lot of people interested in it, the game wasn’t shut down because everyone left.

Rift was pronounced DOA but it made $100 million in 10 months and they put that money back into the game to expand it faster than any other game and develop the first expansion that is about to be released. There are still people playing it and it’s still making a profit.

WoW has lost millions of players over the last year, probably more because companies often hire people who find ways to manipulate the numbers when the news is that bad. But they’ve dropped maybe 25% or more of their subscriber base. MOP isn’t selling as well as they thought, and people have already rushed through the content and started complaining they have run out of “stuff” to do. WoW is dying, obviously, and isn’t worth talking about because no one plays it any more.

Except for the 8 or 9 million who do.

People interpret things the way they want to see them. GW2 is a niche game, GW was a niche game, neither was created to appeal to the WoW-loving crowd and for the most part they don’t. But there are enough people who do not want to play WoW that these games can be successful.

The lack of a monthly fee makes the current population less important than the number of boxes sold. Anyone who has bought the game can put it down or pick it up at any time without affecting the game itself. Six months from now if people who left because of bugs or bots want to check in to see how things have improved, they can do so without paying another cent. This makes it more likely that people will return from time to time than if it was a subscription-based MMO that cost another $15 to return to for a month.

I have tried every weapon combination in the game, and i support the fact that choosing a particular weapon or offhand as “superior” is silly.

Shield and focus, being offhands, are better compared when paired with their main hand best match. Then, they both shine in what they do. Traits, or not.

Take Sword+Focus. Brilliant combination, two blind, two blocks, ranged defense, good attack. Fast, kitten chain that activates burning. Best used? Single, hard hitting mobs that AREN’T IMMUNE TO BLIND (important).
You start with 2 and after a couple of second, 4. You have avoided 2 hits from the boss. Then you hit 5, you have avoided another 3 hits from the boss and can reliably activate 3 and do some damage, then is swapping time to your DPS weapon or waiting to restart in a few seconds.

Take Mace+Shield. Solid as a ROCK. Double group and self heals, a block of sort, two ways of granting protection and ranged defense. Best used? Groups of mobs, or a boss who is immune to blind IF the group can stay together. Start with 3 and then 2, then after a while, 4. 5 if needed, else is switch time.

What is the best combination? Guess what… i use both. I use one of these and the hammer. Which of them i use, it depends on the next encounter. Yes, i switch alot of weapons during dungeons, and even traits. I switch to the traits that makes symbols larger when i use the mace, and to blind=vulnerability trait when using the sword.

So, argument on “this is better than that” are moot for me. It is always situational. As all of this game’s mechanics are.

Here’s what’s illogical to me: telling a group of people to bunch up on one spot in a dungeon and expecting them to do it.

Unless I’m bouncing between multiple ranged walls against a solely ranged enemy, they’re not going to do it. They’re not going to have TIME to do it, and bunching up in a boss fight is likely to increase overall damage sustained, even if it lowers the damage done to an individual.

I’d much rather have a group that’s spread out, and only one person eating damage, than a bunched up group where EVERYONE is taking less damage, but still getting the crap knocked out of them.

Oh, and lulz at the WoR reference, since I stated that ranged fights were the exception to spreading out, and the Shield is useful in that particular instance too, thanks to it being able to block range, in the FIRST post you responded to.

Also lulz, as I never once stated that the shield is amazing. Not ONCE. I don’t worship the shield, but I don’t sit there and try to pretend the Hammer is be-all end-all better, either. I simply stated that there are situations where the Shield Prot boon is much more useful than people are making it out to be.

And one of the fundamental building blocks of this game is adapting to situations. Hence why you should always be carrying a full set of weapons—to maximize your options and use what’s best for each situation. So yeah, in the scenario YOU described, the Hammer may work better. In the scenario I described, the Shield may work better.

That’s kind of the point.

Again, I say, if you dislike the shield, fine, you want improvements made, great, I welcome them. But bad logic is not an acceptable reason, and saying the Hammer is better as a blanket statement is bad logic.

So many opinions in this thread…

Guardians are fine. I’d like to see a Longbow added to our weapon sets because I’d like it (and because I don’t like the other ranged option), but other than that, Guardians are perfectly fine.

Guardians can’t do damage? Ask that for any class who happens to get close when you’re Whirling… I see my enemies health drop around 50% when they get combo’ed in a couple of seconds…
Hammer/Greatsword is unmatchable for melee 1v1s. But since not everyone enjoys meleeing a Guardian, it’s not always the best option…
Sword/Shield or Focus is the most annoying thing ever for any kind of enemy. With a Valor build, it’s probably a broken build for PvP.

And in dungeons, with a proper build, you can do an awesome job DpSing. First, there’s no DpS meters so it doesn’t really matters, but the fact that I can DpS a boss for about 50% of his health and then I keep kiting it for the remaining 50% means he’s kinda attached to me, he likes me, he hates me, or I just wrecked his threat meter and he can’t stop following me.

Also, despite our lack of a decent ranged weapon in my opinion for WvWvW, I do perfectly fine with a Staff. Yeah, a STAFF. That thing with range 600. Damage seems subpar, but it’s a really underrated weapon.

I can’t say about other professions because I haven’t played them as much, but I can get inside a crowd and get out with a proper build/skills. And depending on how many players I can even down one or two before I have to run.

And don’t say, other professions really get better with Guardian boons? Really?
Every profession gives support in a way or another, EVERY.
It’s just that Guardians do much more frequently and all the while still doing whatever they are good doing: killing stuff.
You don’t use Shouts, Consecrations or Spirit Weapons for others. You use them for yourself, but it just happens that everyone else gets benefit from them.
Meditations are sorta individual, and Signets are the most individual utility skills you can get.

Really, play the game, complain less, and if you’re still not convinced, roll another profession. If you don’t go back to your Guardian you’ve found a profession you enjoy, despite it’s flaws. Because EVERY profession has their issues, go check their forums.

My issue with the shield is not that its skills suck. Perhaps they do, but that’s not the issue.

No. The problem is that those skills are just not what I want my shield to do. I equip a shield because I want high defense, and I also want to LOOK like I have good defense, because my character’s physical appearance is important for me. Shields are a very symbolic piece of equipment that signifies defense. So in light of that, I find it very problematic that the guardian’s shield skills are not his best defensive options. Basically, the guardian has to choose between being tanky and looking tanky. That’s just not right.

And it gets even stranger when you consider that the guardian’s shield can’t block anything while a mace or a focus can. Nevermind that blocking is the reason d’être of shields in the first place.

Look at the warrior in comparison. If she wants to go all-out on defense, the shield is by far her best off-hand option, as it should be. If you look at it only from a defense perspective, Shield Stance is without question the best block skill in the game, if not the best defensive skill period. There is no limit to how many attacks it can block for its duration, and the cooldown is shorter then every other big block skills (ie: Shield of Wrath) and can be made even shorter with traits. (Actually, the engi’s Gear Shield is even better but it’s on a fixed skill bar and uses a utility slot while the warrior can use a main-hand like the Mace and have even more defense skills.) So yeah, the warrior’s shield is used exactly for the reason you want to use it.

Now, I’m not asking for Shield Stance for guardians because they already have enough defense as it is, but the shield SHOULD be the guardian’s off-hand of choice for defense, (or at least equal to the focus) and it should have something to do with blocking Personally, I think a skill like “block next attack, give protection to allies on a successful block” would be perfect. It would reward the guardian that can time his block, and the party buffs would fit well in the profession’s support-oriented gameplay

http://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Honorable_Shield

“Also gives +90 toughness, although the tooltip does not reflect this.”

Please post here all the bugs you have found with guardian skills/traits/functionality so we get some of the Anet love for guardians. I will keep this post updated as more information becomes available. DO NOT POST SUGGESTIONS.
Special thanks to They are hashes.4523 for the formatting ideas.

_Virtues ______________________________________________

• Virtue recharge rates from the Virtues line is not reflected in a Virtue’s tooltip. It works, but you won’t see the change if you mouse-over a Virtue.

• Virtue of Justice
  Burn duration only lasts for 4 seconds for 4 tics of damage instead of 5 as indicated in the tooltip.

• Virtue of Resolve
  When improved with Absolute Resolution the tooltip indicates an erroneous healing number, showing a 97% increase instead of the correct 25%.

_Traits ______________________________________________

• Master of Consecrations
  The duration increase is not reflected on the tooltips.

• Monk’s Focus
  It won’t activate if you use a merciful intervention and it didn’t teleport you to an ally. It does activate if you successfully teleport to an ally.

• Courageous Return
  Only recharges Virtue of Courage when you rally killing an enemy while downed, it will not reset the cooldown if you rally via healing from other players.

• Perfect Inscriptions
  • Displays a different behavior in the Mists than in PvE area, explanation here.
  • Makes the passive effects of signets disappear from the tooltips on the skills.

• Vengeful
  Tooltip doesn’t reflect retaliation increase.

• Renewed Justice
  Several users report that it may fail to renew itself upon dealing the finishing blow on a foe.

• Right-Hand Strenght
  The 15% extra crit while using a 1 hander weapon is not reflected on the character panel. Currently unknown if it is actually working or not since it may only affect the mainhand and not your offand, and that could be the reason its not reflected on your stats.

_Greatsword ______________________________________________

_Trident ______________________________________________

• Refraction
  Cast time is supposed to be 1.25 seconds. It roots you and makes you unable to move or cast spells for another 1.5 seconds AFTER the spell has been finished.

Love the staff, it’s great if you play support in the midline, or in front of a siege or a bridge fight.

Against a tightly bound zerg, from these close positions, the #1 and #2 skills do fine AoE damage.

Empower is also excellent in such conditions. The heal it gets off effects a ludicrous amount of people.