Guild Wars 2

If you ever see a guardian get down to less than 50% health and he hits Renewed Focus (3s invulnerability and reset of all his virtues) he is trying to reset his Wings of Resolve to heal back up. It can be interrupted easily if you have a hard CC off cooldown. Our virtues go on full cooldown even if they fail and that will cut off 5-6k of his healing.

I’m not sure how many Guardians still use Shelter as their healing ability at this point, but if you have unblockable marks you might save your fear to counter Shelter, which would cut off another ~5k healing.

Obtena.7952:

knbBlackTemplar.3059:

So, rangers, thieves and elementalists have signets for increase runspeed, warriors have trait to increase speed with melee weapons, does guardians have anything?

Sorry for my english.

You do, but they aren’t class specific like signets or traits. You might wonder why they don’t. It’s because it’s a deficiency for the class that Anet admitted that is intended. That also answers your next question:

Will Guardians ever get a speed buff? It’s not likely unless the dev thinking changes quite a bit.

They said explicitly that Guardians shouldn’t have a decent range weapon for years … now we have one of the stronger range weapons in the game. I’m of course talking about the Scepter with its new an improved Zealous Scepter trait. It’s pretty OP.

CutesySylveon.8290:

So you think a small circle that you cannot move at all in for 6 sec is fair? A large circle would be much more reasonable since you can actually defend yourself and not get pushed back every time you move. Freely dodging around would give the counter play it needs like how stun breaking is for any other cc.

Its counter play is stability, or the insane amount of invulnerability in this game. Also most teleports work to varying degrees. It is further balanced around having an almost 3s cast time where the guardian can’t move and is easily interrupted. It also has a kitten cooldown, which makes it the longest weapon related cooldown for a guardian and the 2nd longest cooldown for a weapon in the game.

DeeSystm.1256:

It should just form one ring, which changes in size for 1-5 people caught in it, up to a size slightly large than a static field at 5 people. This way it’s still a nice large cc field but at the same time you can’t loose 6+ stacks of stab if you accidentally wander into that kitten.

It’s not a nice large CC field, it is a nice large CC circle which poses no problems for anyone trapped inside it because they would have enough room to freely dodge around. Hunter’s Ward doesn’t need changes, stability in WvW needs changes.

Guard is always the mid point in this game, never over-powered and rarely if ever under-powered. We’re at a fine point in this game. We bring solid DPS in raids, work average in fractals, compete fine in sPVP (outside of professional level tournaments), and are strong in WvW.

That being said, I would caution the OP that Guardians have changed quite a bit with the inclusion of the Dragon Hunter traitline and expect to use Longbow from ranged far more often than you are going to use Great Sword. You can still use hammer in raids, but it is the most boring weapon in the game to use by far.

In sPvP and for WvW (for the most part), you need the Dragon Hunter traitline. The only build that can get away from not using DH is a burn build, but even that will struggle. DH should form the core of your build. The bow will give you actual range pressure and not force you to always be in melee; all of your virtues get extreme buffs; you gain 2 essential traps: Purification and Test of Faith; and the traitline itself has some very helpful traits. Couple DH with Valor (Monk’s Focus) for high survival and utility.

For PVE you can use any build, but by using staff as an offhand you gain mobility, or better yet buy a Sigil of Speed, which can easily stack 2-3 minutes worth of swiftness as you kill things.

The first DH was really bad and the second one was way too aggressive against a Necro. He popped his CoP with almost no conditions on him and was using Wings of Resolve for locking down instead of the extra 8k of healing he needed to last the entire fight. I’m surprised they both had a great-sword and the first DH though it was a good idea to open against a necro with GS. You beat the second Guardian fairly easily, but I wonder if he would of killed you if he had Virtue of Courage off cooldown to start the fight.

Against a thief standing perfectly still, is there any class in the game that can’t kill them in under 4s (length of Dragon Maw)?

Exedore.6320:

Ragnarox.9601:

Wait wha? You are suggesting DH nerf? You know that DH is just boring and predictive class that is easily killable by all specs? Do you even DH bro?

DH needs nerfs to its passive, brain-dead mechanics and buffs which add depth.

How do your changes add depth to the class? All they do is slightly increase the skill ceiling while adding lots of clunkiness to traps.

Exedore.6320:

Agree with Ghotistyx.6942. A lot of the changes were made just because you wanted to change it, not because it improved balance. Further, changing tons of things takes a lot of time. You need to really cut down your list to what is a problem and what can be reasonably changed.

I agree as well. I know that many guardians like to complain often about the “dire” problems going on with the class, but it is not in bad enough shape to need the complete overhaul you are suggesting. There are a couple of areas that may need a complete redesign (spirit weapons), but most issues with the guardian just need some tweaks or added effects.

Streamlining the list of changes would also help get better feedback from the guardian community. The current change list is so complex that it is almost impossible to give meaningful feedback and it takes far too long to parse in a reasonable amount of time.

JackaS.9426:

I just dont understand why they nerfed the mid air port with JI. The hammer 2 burst and gs3 needs it for working. Its just a joke they nerfed it. And, when I go wvw with my guard I get so frustrated because most of the port spots got nerfed and I stay at same place when using JI. I cant even rely on it for kiting from enemies cuz most of times I stay in the same place when porting. Makes no sense they nerf this small things and they cant nerf the real op stuff of other classes like revenant sword 2 that hits you in stealth without target!!!! I hate this.

This was not a guardian specific change, but a change that occurred across all classes that had a teleport, since it was being abuse to access areas they weren’t suppose to have access to.

Brocktanor.1794:

Sorry for my English as I’m on mobile.

I know this is another qq topic, but I just felt like sharing my concerns about the state of the guardian at the moment.

I also know that initially the role of the guardian is not to only dps and I wouldn’t mind if he wasn’t so subpar in all other aspects.
When you take the perspective of raids; guardian can’t fill any role optimally!

1. The necro gs spells have higher damage
2. 3 out of 5 necro gs spells have cc (useful for breakbars)
- part of the cc is chill that is way more useful than those poor burn ticks you apply as a guardian every few attacks
3. Necro has a base health of 100% ( guardian-60%) and can survive a burst
4. Necro has a useful passive that increases his “health pool” even more entering reaper state (with right masteries necro even heals and gains might in reaper form.)
5. Wells vs traps: wells do more damage and no need to come in close.
6. Minions vs spirit weapons: minions have higher resistance and have no limited life time

I don’t think you really understand Guardians. Looking at Guardians in just a raid environment:

1. Hammer will out-class or preform equally to the Necros GS in terms of DPS and it will provide constant protection (33% damage reduction) to an entire party.

2. 3-5 Hammer skills have CC needed for Breakbars.

3. Necros may have far more health than a guardian, but in a raid environment it doesn’t really matter, and with a constant 33% damage reduction that makes their health bars basically even. Combine that with Guardians having arguably the most self healing in the game and higher base toughness than a necromancer and I think Guardians are in a fine position health-wise.

4. Gaining personal might stacks in raids is not that important, because a decent party will provide max might stacks anyways.

5. Traps are different than wells period. They have some strengths and some disadvantages.

6. Our spirit weapons suck, no question there, but no one uses them so they aren’t detrimental to the performance of the class.

I still see no reason what so ever to believe that Anet would nerf our swiftness output due to the creation of a 25% speed buff. This isn’t a balance problem where you have to give and take. Guardians can currently already obtain the 25% buff by using Traveler/Speed Runes in all aspects of gameplay, so we already know 25% speed boost doesn’t make the Guardian OP. The only thing a +25% speed buff would do is improve a Guardian’s QoL and free up our rune choice in competitive PVP environments.

Longbow #5: Hunters Ward
https://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Hunter's_Ward

Counters:
https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/professions/guardian/How-to-counter-Hunter-Ward-Dragon-Maw/first#post5762504

It also could be Dragon Maw, but the counters would be the same.

My guess would be they bring back tomes with warhorn off hand. Although I would have never of guess in a million years that they would create the DH and I’m fairly convinced I will be long gone before the next elite is revealed.

Crazy tome idea:
Since they couldn’t make tomes work as a full ability-bar swap, it will be changed so that when a (utility) tome is activated it adds modifiers to our 3 Virtues and replaces the 2 baseline abilities of the warhorn (if is equipped). Each Utility tome has a focus (damage-burst, damage-condi, utility-cc, and utility-buffs) and only one tome can be activated at a time. The elite tome would remain a short duration, full ability-bar swap.

Aeolus.3615:

if they add the 25% movement speed we would loose the shouts speed boo and a staff skill, besides, theres already to much speed boon and passive speed boost.

How are these two things correlated?

Passive is 25%, Swiftness is 33%, and in current news every other class in the game has a 25% passive speed buff and of those said classes many of them can keep up permanent Swiftness duration. Herald can even keep up permanent Swiftness for an entire party without even having to press a button. Why would Guardians need to forfeit their Swiftness skills?

nicknamenick.2437:

uhm ok lets give DH this trait then:

run faster while wielding “melee” weapons +25%

And place this trait into DH traitline so you have to drop a different trait for this one.

Happy then? :-)

To be fair here, i dont think DH needs a speed boost, DH is a range class and just like warriors they dont get a speed boost while wielding ranged weapons, also you have other ways to move around, you even get a pull AND a leap + huge block.. but somehow you guys want it all i guess.

This would be the most counter intuitive way of implementing a +25% movement speed trait, but even an implementation as terrible as this it would still be a go to trait for anyone playing PVP or WVW and much better than having nothing. So yes, I would be happy.

TheBravery.9615:

@ draxynnic.3719

Wow, I appreciate your feedback. I’ll follow up with a response later. (it’s 4 am and I have work tomorrow)

Ragnar the Rock.3174:

@ those of you calling for removal of boons on traps and an arming time for traps.

You do realize that would essentially kill traps right ?

They are already pretty meh vs competent players because most of their damage can be avoided.
If they didn’t have the boons there would be little reason to use them at all.

I could say that traps have killed shouts. While not really “stealing” their identity, it fulfils a similar role by doing something less (no party support), while giving something more (damage).

In my opinion, traps should have a dedicated identity of burst damage. For purposes being a “trap”, granting the user boons while also dealing a ton of burst damage is (arguably) too strong. If the removal of the boons do in fact kill the traps, I would suggest that the damage from the traps be increased, but wouldn’t go back to bringing back boons on trap trigger.

Also from an interprofession balance perspectives, guardian traps are much stronger than thief traps (by a large margin) and ranger traps (by a lesser margin).

I know that traps get a lot of hate, but in my opinion traps are quintessentially Guardian and are what symbols were originally intended on being … giving actual helpful boons (I’m looking at you Wrath and Swiftness) and threatening damage if you don’t avoid them. If a guardian can’t have 25% movement speed because we are suppose to be slow and clunky … if a guardian (prior to HOT) can’t have a decent range weapon because we have to be melee … if a guardian is completely design around being only dangerous if you are fighting the guardian on his own terms … then traps are the answer. They are symbols 2.0.

The only problem with traps right now is that they are a utility slot, which means you can have 5 of them on your bar at once. 1 trap on a guardian, nothing special. 2 traps on a guardian, meh. 5 Traps on a guardian, skill-less garbage that is guaranteed to kill unsuspecting players on the other side of the map. Also they should not go on cooldown when laid rather when activated and have a de-arm feature by re-clicking the trap.

@Ephemeral Wallaby: Quiet you! I’ve been using them in PVE for a long time and the best part about them is they’re dirt cheap because no one likes them

Did they give a time frame on the next expansion? They said the first expansion was being brainstormed and worked on right after launch and it took ~3 years to be released. The big redesign of WvW to fix all the current problems this xpansion caused isn’t even guaranteed to happen this year.

Is it unreasonable and impatient to want a 25% speed increase, largely to free up our rune choices and QoL, in less than 2 years? It’s not like Anet can make the argument that the +25% movement speed is unbalanced on Guardian, since we have access to it already with runes. The only reason Guardian doesn’t have a 25% speed buff is because Anet has this horrible limiting vision on what a guardian has to be

Nooooooo, the forums ate my post that look me 35 minutes to write, kittens!

I apologize but this will be short and blunt because I don’t want to write everything again:

Zealot’s Speed: A trait’s internal cooldown, if it is based off a skill, will almost always be the skills ICD, so the ICD is 15s not 30s. I Like that it activates from boon threshold so that we can choose when to activate it and use it out of combat. I think that since it is a symbol this could cause a lot of balancing issues in the future since it benefits from all other symbol traits like healing, size, cripple, increase damage, burning, etc.

Fiery Wrath: Please don’t lower its damage anymore. It started at 10% and was already nerfed to 7%. This is not part of the power creep, but a base line trait that a lot of the guardians damage is balanced around. Similar to how a guardians survivability is balanced around meditations and AH. Furthermore Zeal is a damage line (power, not condi), and although I appreciate the extra personal survival your changes added, Zeal needs to increase DPS first and foremost. If its too powerful as a major adept, make it into a minor.

Virtuous Speed: Completely Backwards. Although 25% movement speed is always helpful, its primary purpose is to get us from point A to B faster (between points in sPVP, roaming in WvW, and running around in PVE). It makes no sense to use all your virtues, the backbone of a guardian’s defense while traveling. Should be “increase movement speed when one or more virtues is off cooldown”. In all honesty whichever trait line gets the 25% movement speed buff it will be the go to line for PVP and I would rather see it in Valor or Virtues which are the 2 most commonly use lines currently.

Glacial Heart: Seems like a good fit for Zeal, but even with all your changes GH doesn’t benefit the hammer in PVE at all, meaning zeal has to be one of the stronger PVP lines. Right now with your changes, Valor and Dragon Hunter are still mandatory, but you gutted Virtues, so maybe Zeal is viable.

Fervourous Precision: Great trait, in all honesty Zeal should have more +crit traits. It makes no sense that Radiance is our best condi and crit line.

Shattered Aegis: I like the combining of the two traits although I’m not sure you need to nerf the damage and healing. Ironically aegis is not actually as prevalent as you would think on Guardians. Fragment of Faith is the only skill/trait that really blows up the balance of Shattered Aegis because it sprinkles aegis around like candy.

Symbolic Avenger: Like the change to increase size, its really a necessary modification for damage builds that use symbols.

I feel like with longbow, my secondary weapon set is exactly that … secondary. I’ve been using hammer for the CC, but I think sw/f or sw/s work great as well. It really depends on what little edge you are looking for … more CC, defense, or burst.

GS is the only one I haven’t enjoyed much. It just doesn’t seem to have the necessary damage to burst any more.

^ You’re completely correct the cleanse is after the leap is completed and can therefore be stopped.

Not all DH’s are exactly the same so the amount of condi clear can vary dramatically, but in general you are most likely going to go against Smite Condition and Wings of Resolve (traited); while also often facing Contemplation of Purity and Hunter’s Fortification.

Smite Condition is a low cooldown (16s) utility and removes 2 conditions. There is nothing you can do to stop this. You can try to bait a DH to use it early with CC, since it is the best way to clear CC.

Wings of Resolved (traited) removes 3 conditions, and its animation looks like an angel jumping. I don’t think you can stop the cleanse, but you really want to stop the rest of the ability because it heals for 4k and will go on full cooldown even if the skill fails.

Contemplation of Purity, is similar to Smite in that it is instant cast, but it converts all conditions to corresponding boons. You really can’t stop this as well, but if you have boon corruption you will want to use it directly after CoP. Just be careful because chill gets converted to 2s of resistance.

The Dragon Hunter’s Grandmaster trait is a draw between Hunter’s Fortification (removes a condition every time you block an attack) and Light Heavy (knock back with bow). So if you don’t get knocked back by a bow assume Hunter’s Fortification. Which means don’t attack them when they are using shelter, focus 5, or Shield of Courage because you are just helping a guardian out.

The most common heal in pvp currently is Purification (trap heal). It heals for a lot if your opponent sets off the trap. So if a guardian is low on health do not get close to them because they will try to trap heal.

Best advice I can give you against a guardian is CC, especially near the end of the fight. Guardians have a hard time fitting much stability in their builds and can be easy to lock down once they have used Shield of Courage.

Incorporate Dragon Hunter into your current build if you have unlocked it. It will dramatically help you in the new zones. The longbow gives you range, the new Virtues are much stronger, and the new traps add a great mixture of damage with boons. Radiance pairs well with DH in open world content since it renews Justice, this should give you enough damage to keep Knight’s gear.

I’ve used traveler runes off and on, but I mainly stick with scrapper runes currently, since they give me a lot of staying power.

Exedore.6320:

Dragonhunter’s only strength is spamming traps on a node in a small fight. It can’t handle ranged pressure well, not does it offer amazing support.

In my experience it handles range pressure as well as any other class does (except for maybe druid).

I would personally prefer if signets didn’t get the 25% speed buff although the Signet of Wrath change does make sense. The 25% speed increase is only beneficial for open world map grind (don’t care), and in sPVP and WvW where I already have an abundance of necessary utilities that compete for our 3 spots. My biggest beef with my current sPVP build is that I’m as slow as a rock because the only way to incorporate swiftness in the build is through runes, utilities, or staff, and all of which will dramatically cut down on my survivability or damage output.

I’m not great at PVP, but I have had absolutely terrible luck with teams. I can’t even count the number of games I’ve played with a scrapper that won’t even give the team starting swiftness. I saw a guardian on my team with 3 spirit weapons last night … /sigh. The good news is that I’ve yet to encounter too many of the necros, scrappers, revenants that I’m sure plague the higher divisions.

I feel like this change would just make shield 5 an alternative version of Shield of Courage and add a 3s time-to-live to Guardian, but otherwise not really add the long term survivability you mentioned. The projectile absorption on shield 5 already adds the running away potential you spoke of.

It’s not going to happen, but a ground targeted Flashing Blade or Judge’s Intervention would be a better way to achieve the escape you are looking for.

I don’t know how it would work exactly, but I think it would be cool if Light’s Judgment was replaced with a teleporting decoy trap similar to Necro’s Flesh Worm.

^ As a walking stick

I think all your points on the Radiant tree are correct and I like the consolidation of Healer’s Retribution and Master Retribution as well as moving Wrath of Justice. But, I still don’t see myself choosing any of the new traits you added even though I do like the ideas behind them. I could see Blinding Blast being okay for power builds depending on the damage of the blast.

By personal block do you mean ~3s of almost invulnerability, or are you referring to a single aegis proc?

Guardians suffer the same problems every other class suffers from … only having 1-2 viable builds for most content and 50% of our traits/utilities/weapons not getting any use, because they are either terrible or they just can’t compete against better options. Anet compounds the problem by focusing all their resources on keeping the 1-2 builds balance, never critically thinking about improving aspects of the Guardian that have never been utilized since launch.

Paladin amulet, Scrapper runes, Blood Sigil, Hunter’s Fortification, Test of Faith, defensive off-weapons (shield / focus / hammer), proper timing of Shield of Courage and Renewed Focus, kite (especially on the circular perimeter of ToF), almost always preset Purification.

Like Reikken said you can dodge through the traps without getting most of the damage or the effects. The only traps that are going to really mess you up are Test of Faith and Maw. For ToF just don’t walk though the boundary and for Maw if you get trapped in it immediately use Renewed Focus and walk out of it. If you can find a place on your bar for any form of stability your going to be in a much better place since it will counter the DH pushing/pulling you around. Keep in mind DH is either going to have 2-3 traps or 2-3 meditations 9/10 times so they are hard press in fitting any stability into their builds so CC works excellently against them (especially immobilize). Lastly look for sigils with additional conditions that can help cover your burn stacks, because a DH is going to be removing condi’s (especially just 1 stack) far too often for you to do threatening damage.

Sergo.2867:

Greets, folks. I’m just back from a layoff, and would like some advice on how to play against Dragonhunter traps in PvP.

The pull/daze/choppity-choppity seems to be too much for any of my defensive skills and traits to deal with.

Thanks!

What class(es) do you play?

“Symbol of Energy + Psychical Projectile remove conditions too. We can remove 3.”

According to: https://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Light_field

“Projectile finishers with a light field only cleanse conditions from the character launching the projectile if that person is within melee range of target. Otherwise, only those in the path of the projectile after it enters the light field are cleansed.”

Meaning you would only benefit from the cleanse if you are in melee range which is not often with a long bow and you cast Symbol of Energy on yourself and then stand in place for 4s. Not to mention True Shot and Deflecting Shot are 100% projectile finishers, but your auto attack is only a 20% finisher, meaning on average during the duration for symbol of energy you would only proc 1 cleanse from your auto attacks.

Spirit weapons could easily be balanced so they were helpful without being overpowered. Anet will never invest the time in doing so though.

The counter to this build: any stability, stealth, or invulnerability that every class has buckets of.

I would love 20s of swiftness on a 30s cooldown. That means a Pure of Voice +Honorable Staff build would have 100% swiftness uptime.

I change it often because there is no clear winner … most often it is either Contemplation of Purity (for condi cleanse and 2k more healing) or Test of Faith for some more damage, protection and area control.

Build I run:
http://gw2skills.net/editor/?vVAQJASDn8cCVDhlDB8DhlEiKL/+vA8aZDgEQ+5j+rH-TpBFABDcBAI4QAc/+DiXGghHAAAHBAA

Monk’s focus is 2k heal for every meditation I use, Purification is 8.5k healing, and Wings of Resolve is 4k healing. If I live long enough to pop all my defensive cooldowns I have ~40k effective health (much higher if I live longer than 30s) and that is not factoring in any damage mitigation from Scrapper Runes, Hunter’s Fortification, or any invulnerability/blocks. If I’m lucky the extra mitigation is avoiding another 20k damage evening out to around 50k damage to kill me.

Although my playstyle is very offensive so I blow a lot of cooldowns on offense, so on average it is more like 30-40k.

The stun break does not apply stability, the virtue applies both a stun break and stability.

Virtue of Courage (instant cast) when traited with Indomitable Courage:
stun break →Virtue of Courage (aegis proc) → stability proc

This is the order of events, although since the Virtue is instant cast the 3 things appear to happen simultaneous.

Shield of Courage (~.25s cast time) when traited with Indomitable Courage:
stun break →.25s later → Shield of Courage (frontal shield) →stability proc

If during the .25s cast time the ability is interrupted the stun break will still apply, but the shield and stability will not because they occur after the cast time.

A clearer example of this is with Wings of Resolve (1s cast time). The (regen) from the trait Inspired Virtues and the (retribution) from Virtue of Retribution are not applied to your character until after you land the animation from the wings. If your animation is interrupted the regen and the retribution does not apply. While conversely the trait Absolute Resolution will remove 3 conditions, but the condition removal will be activated before the skill and will work regardless of if the cast time is interrupted.

@Hunter: Or guardian hammer wasn’t properly tested long enough to give it accurate damage results previously.

eithedog.4678:

http://metabattle.com/wiki/Build:Dragonhunter_-_DPS/Support

Considering his rotation is only hammer AA his secondary weapon is completely open. Having a weapon that can produce a symbol on demand is helpful but even then GS or longbow could easily fit into this slot.

@Lilz Shorty: The reason the stun break is instant but not the stability is because stun breaks always precede the skill being used, and boons (stability included) get applied only after a skill is successfully completed. The reason for this is because most skills get reduced cooldowns if they are interrupted, so to stop exploitation boons have to apply after a skill is successful otherwise you could get free boons by interrupting your own skills.

In this particualr case though, the Devs didn’t add a reduced cooldown for Virtues if they are interuppted so they should either add a reduced cooldown or allow boons to proc prior to skill success.

@Kam:

Sigil of Accuracy = 30s
Sigil of Air = 8.5g

Honestly the biggest difference is a minor +/- 4-5% damage difference over a long period of time if you truly want to min and max.

@Sorel: he clearly stated “the map selection should choose the map with the majority vote.” He never implied that his opinion was more valuable than another’s, but that the majority opinion should always take precedent over the minority.

I don’t understand how:
nearest to the stomp,
most or least health while down,
or longest time spent while down,
couldn’t be criteria to justify the rallying order.

^He was just referring to it having a small cast time as a trade-off for a much stronger virtue. Instant cast skills can also be use during other abilities and that would be stupid for the new virtues, which have their own animations.