Guild Wars 2

Hello again,

When I said the guardian is in a good state, I meant that I did not agree with most of the proposed changes and I had already written why.

This is what Jonathan Sharp had to say about the profession as seen in the December 14 Update Notes: “The Guardian is a heavy armor class who relies on boons to make up for their low levels of innate health. They focus on area control and punishing enemies for the position on the battlefield. We want them to feel very powerful when their boons are active, but if those boons are removed, they will start to feel pressure. They can remove conditions more easily than the Warrior, but share the Warrior’s need to be in melee range to dole out maximum damage.”

Maybe I was not clear in my lengthy post, but since the guardian is a class that requires to be in melee range to be most effective and feel very powerful when their boons are active, it is natural for them to take 30 in valor to get more armor and also a trait that heals when applying boons. Guardian players are just playing to the profession’s strength.

People seem to have a problem with taking 30 in valor or honor because they see it more of a bunker/supportive trait line. Over time, some may get bored of this role especially after playing hundreds of hours and that is understandable, but inherently guardians were meant for this role to “feel very powerful” when applying boons and removing conditions from teammates. I for one am glad that guardians have a specialized role, unlike the warrior which can roam but are not as good as thieves and elementalists, and also can bunker but not as well as the guardian.

Making zeal and radiance grandmaster traits as viable as altruistic healing will put the class over the top. How can you change any of the grandmaster traits in those lines to compete with a trait that synergizes so well with the guardian’s strength—boons and condition removal? For thought: would placing any of AH, MF, PoV in those two lines satisfy people?

Are the minor and major traits in those lines viable? I believe so: they provide enough diversity for one to play a more offensive support role if one pleases. And the skill balancers also realize this: in the December 14 patch they made binding jeopardy and blind exposure more worthwhile to take.

As for the weapons, I find them to be “good.” However, this is semantics and some people may want more from a weapon. What you cannot argue though is the fact the staff is a great support weapon. Taking 2-H mastery, symbols are larger, and just eating a chocolate omnomberry cream will give you almost permanent swiftness to your entire WvW zerg and twelve stacks of might to your party. Line of warding is amazingly “good” and also fun for all sorts of WvW scenarios. The scepter “serves its purpose” as I have said—a viable ranged weapons that does decent DPS and that has an extremely hard to dodge 3 second immobilize/3 stacks of vulnerability (untraited). Again, what more exactly did people want?

Stating that anything in WvW with lots of “white hit” (a zerg) is skillbased is also rubbish. In those cases I run around like a chicken with my staff critting 1.2 k to everything around me just once or twice with auto attack and get twice as many loot bags compared to when I use any other weapon. Forget aegis, you want a different mechanic entirely in those cases (try wall of reflection, sanctuary, or ele’s swirling winds). Aegis is fine.

Just because you play tankish does not mean you are excluded from being offensive. You may not be critting like a thief or warrior (and I don’t think that was the intention of the designer) but you can make up for it by stacking your might boons or using blinds against key skills or using knockbacks, wards, immobilizes to control the playing field. You have traits in zeal and radiance that improve those immobilizes and blinds that give you diversity in play styles.

I see the guardian not as a jack-of-all-trades profession but one that is highly specialized with enough diversity to keep it still fun to play after these many hours. People may call me out for being “indifferent,” but I still stand by the belief that the profession is fine as it is besides some minor bugs.

For point number one, we can agree that guardians would be more useful to your team (in most cases) by bringing party-wide boons and heals rather than spirit weapons that do very limited damage or signets that benefit only you. Zeal and radiance traits are selfish. There are some 1v1 or roaming builds that use these traits but guardians were not meant for that role due to the relative lack of mobility and burst. They are not competitive and you better reroll to another class if you want to be a roamer.

Point number two. Well it should be obvious that any stats concerning conditions would be almost useless to a guardian. We have four conditions: burning, blind, immobilize, and vulnerability. Only one is affected by condition damage and since it only stacks in duration, the guardian’s burn contribution will not be noticeable in most encounters. In addition, condition duration is pretty much worthless for the other three. Having an extra second on immobilize may help you get that finishing blow in WvW, but honestly it probably won’t matter in most cases. Power (and also condition damage if that burn is really important to you) is easily replaceable by a nice little boon called might. For each might stack, you get +35 power. You’re better putting points in virtues to get longer boons for might stacks, which have relatively long durations for a boon (from the top of my head, 5 seconds from empowering might, 10 seconds for 12 stacks from empower, 10 seconds for each block if you have 25 points in valor, 3 stacks for 20 seconds from superior sigil of battle, 10 seconds from superior sigil of strength). I run a might stacking build and have 15-18 might stacks up consistently (without a staff) in the middle of a fight meaning greater than 500 power, more than you will ever get putting points just into zeal and ignoring boons and support traits. Finally, more crit. chance through extra precision is nice, but most guardian builds nowadays are already at that 40-50% crit. chance mark which should be enough for the class.

For the other concerns brought up:

Staff – It’s great as a support weapon. Permanent twelve might stacks with increased boon duration, permanent swiftness, a ward, an AoE spam, and a much improved orb of light. What more can you want?

1-H weapon – They may not seem as useful in PvE or WvW since you want to do the most AoE damage possible, but I don’t see why people think they aren’t as viable as 2-H weapons. They serve their purpose. Sword – a teleport and blind, great single target burst. Shield – just amazing overall, protection to party and knockback/bubble.

Scepter – longest range of all guardian weapons, immobilize; Focus – good for getting might stacks and a blind/condition removal.

Symbols –Upgrading symbols offensively may be a good idea for the points you have to spend, but symbols for offensive purposes is generally not a good idea since it’s easily avoidable.

Spirit Weapons – Shield is very useful in dungeons, hammer is nice 1v1 in PvP. Other than that, really no comment since I always thought they spirit weapons were underwhelming in general and don’t use too often.

Retaliation – Someone else pointed out that thieves can’t just spam their skills on you and expect to win which differentiates good vs. bad thieves. I think retal is fine. In WvW, stacking area retal is a good counter to the OP AoE right now. Overall AoE needs to get fixed before retal, but in small scale battles retal is fine.

Aegis buff – Giving more than one stack of aegis is even less skill based than letting retaliation stay the way it is. You use aegis only when you want to block key skills, which takes skill. It’s fine.

In summary, I feel that most of the concerns are trying to make the guardian into something it is not meant to be. We are a heavy armor class that can bunker very well, give great party support through boons, and do pretty good damage in close range. I also disagree with the belief that we lack diversity. I love the fact that guardians have so much tanking and support capabilities. But I also have accepted our limited offensive repertoire, including but not limited to our lack of ranged damage and mobility as compared to other professions. We are different from the warrior in that we do not get cripples, knockdowns, and stuns but a teleport, immobilize, wards, and pullback. The joy I have found in playing the guardian is realizing these facts and trying to find a balance to use the most optimal build suited for any occasion.

I also have played over a thousand hours all on my guardian and have completed most aspects of PvE (dungeons and getting a legendary) in addition to being r30+ in sPvP and having close to 10k kills in WvW all on the guardian. Unlike the OP however, I believe that the guardian is in a good state currently other than some bugs that need to be fixed (e.g. Pure of Voice not working with Hold the line and SYS consistently). Most of the concerns stem from possibly wanting to do what guardians were not meant to do.

First, I agree that having 30 points in valor is, in dungeons and WvW, necessary to be a “competitive” guardian—a profession that requires to be in close range to be most effective. Naturally, having high toughness is a must when being one of the first targets of a zerg in WvW and usually the only target of monsters in dungeons without having to disengage. The healing either from using meditations or boons through altruistic healing just puts the guardian on a level above any other profession when it comes to tanking.

I disagree that AH should come inherently through virtues. It is fine to be taking 30 in valor in every non-supportive guardian builds to take AH. There is enough room to “diversify” with the other 40 trait points. For example, one can take three shouts and go 30 in Honor and 10 in virtues to have a lot of condition removal (and more with soldier runes) on a shortened cool down to have a truly tank build with great team support and mass self-healing. Similarly, one can take 20 in virtues to have a longer boon duration and other utilities like longer consecrations or spirit weapons or boosted virtues. One can spread out some minor/major points to zeal or radiance to play a little around with symbols, signets, and various offensive conditions. One can even advance into the grandmaster traits in zeal or radiance for buffed symbols or right-handed strength/perfect inscriptions even though they do not synergize as well with altruistic healing.

In fact, the true problem that underlies this concern of lack of diversity is that there is really no need to advance points into either major or grandmaster in zeal or radiance traits. There are two reasons and they cannot be fixed by minor tweaks without having to change the entire guardian paradigm: (1) the traits are selfish and do not synergize well (or shall I say are plain inferior to) with everything that guardians bring to the table through boons (shouts and virtues) and being a damage sponge; (2) the extra stats one get from these trait lines are easily simply not needed/not very useful (i.e. condition duration and condition damage) or easily replaceable.

Golden.3012:

Looks like I’m having the same problem. Yesterday night (around 3 CST) I put up 250 vicious claws on sale for 11.95 silver. I was able to sell about 7 and received my money before I went to sleep. This afternoon I log in and saw that my claws were all sold out but had only received 2 gold 47 silver 82 copper. I should have received about 24 gold.

I hope they have a way to fix this so we can get our gold.

Just received my gold. Thank you!

Looks like I’m having the same problem. Yesterday night (around 3 CST) I put up 250 vicious claws on sale for 11.95 silver. I was able to sell about 7 and received my money before I went to sleep. This afternoon I log in and saw that my claws were all sold out but had only received 2 gold 47 silver 82 copper. I should have received about 24 gold.

I hope they have a way to fix this so we can get our gold.

I’m on NA overflow that seems to have just started. Join in on me.