Guild Wars 2

Guardian:
both Core and Firebrand a plagued with horrible bugs.

see:
https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/professions/guardian/Guardian-Trait-bugs/first#post6715306
https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/professions/guardian/Firebrand-bug-mega-thread

Tomes:
Tome CD’s are too high and cast times to long for practical use alot of times
and overall just feel incredibly clunky and are therefore not fun to use.
Tome passive are incredibly weak compared to DH and core guardian making the Grandmaster to keep them after active use not desirable at all and is merely taken cause all other options are equally bad…

Tome of Justice:
Abysmal power scaling.

Tome of Resolve:
Heal values and scaling are horrible (core guard and Dragonhunter can heal better)
Skill #3 feels pointless.

Tome of Courage:
Fairly useless unless the player takes the trait that aegis heals and that all skills in tome of courage apply aegis.

Axe:
Skill #1 feels very disconnected with its delayed 2nd attack and weak due extremly low duration conditions being applied. A range increase to 300 would also help make it a little less horrible than it currently is.
Skill #2 needs something, anything really, to be atleast borderline useable be it a leap before the smbol + lower casttime or a boon/movement impairing condition.
Skill #3 unreliable at times makes a slight range increase.

Mantras:
Need to be radial or higher ranger with a bigger angle on the cone.
Mantra of Solace (Heal skill) scaling with healing power is horrible.
Elite Mantra feels lakeluster and needs a buff (maybe protection or resistance boon)

Traits:
Aside from legendary lore these feel really uninspired, lackluster and not really impactful.
“Imbued Haste” need power added to it to not force people into pure condi.

Overall I am more than disappointed and while in the past I tried to be constructive and positive however was in charge of the firebrand spec failed on all levels.
When u try to give us a melee only support spec the skills and traits need to be powerful enough to actually enalbe such a playstyle and not make us weaker at pretty much everything except burn spam resulting in a spec that is borderline useless.

bump for awareness (will continue to do so till fixed)

Currently the zeal trait lines is plagued by 2 major bugs:

1. Adept major trait : “Zealous Scepter” (not working)
This trait does not apply might for weapons other than scepter unless the grandmaster major trait “Permeating Wrath” from the virtues line is taken.

2. Grandmaster mafor trait : “Shattered Aegis” (bugged/wrong scaling)
The skill “Mystic Rebuke” that is triggered by the grandmaster trait “Shattered Aegis” in the “Zeal”-traitline scales with (266 + 1.0 * power) according to the official wiki however ingame the scaling is at a meager value of around (266 + 0.2658333 * power).
This results in abysmal dmg numbers in practical use.
If any dev could reply wether the scaling is intended or indeed bugged I’d be nice.

If people find other bugs related to traits or skills feel free to throw them in here.

Currently the zeal trait lines is plagued by 2 major bugs:

1. Adept major trait : “Zealous Scepter” (not working)
This trait does not apply might for weapons other than scepter unless the grandmaster major trait “Permeating Wrath” from the virtues line is taken.

2. Grandmaster mafor trait : “Shattered Aegis” (bugged/wrong scaling)
The skill “Mystic Rebuke” that is triggered by the grandmaster trait “Shattered Aegis” in the “Zeal”-traitline scales with (266 + 1.0 * power) according to the official wiki however ingame the scaling is at a meager value of around (266 + 0.2658333 * power).
This results in abysmal dmg numbers in practaical use.
If any dev could reply wether the scaling is intended or indeed bugged I’d be nice.

If people find other bugs related to traits or skills feel free to throw them in here.

bump for awareness

The skill “Mystic Rebuke” that is triggered by the grandmaster trait “Shattered Aegis” in the “Zeal”-traitline scales with (266 + 1.0 * power) according to the official wiki however ingame the scaling is at a meager value of around (266 + 0.2658333 * power).
This results in abysmal dmg numbers during practical use.

If any dev could reply wether the scaling is intended or indeed bugged I’d be nice.

Is there any change u guys are gonna take a look and change the over dmg calculation for guardian greatsword #5 (Binding BLade)?

Right now on a “meta”-build with marauders amulet adn laynx runes given its current damage formular it does:
(0.2 * Condition Damage) + 160 resulting in less than 200 dmg per tick (which is almost nothing)

Part 2 of my post cause it got too long:

Utility Skills

• Test of Faith: Is no longer unblockable

Its a small change but could already stop the trap from being so massivly unfun to play against for people as they now could use block abilites or aegis to position themselves differently across the border of the trap without wasting a valuable dodge helping multiple classes that currently struggle vs this trap like mesmer for example.

• Spirit Weapons: their Cooldown now starts the moment the weapons summoned

• Sword of Justice: Cooldown increased to 45 seconds

Duration reduced to 25 seconds

• Hammer of Wisdom: Cooldown increased to 50 seconds

*Test of Faith: increased cooldown to 36 seconds and reduce both inital and secondary dmg by about 15-25%

Now 30s Cooldown with trait resulting in a lower proctection uptime. The lower uptime of the trap in general reduces its spammability which is a problem in lower tiers. Right now the trap still does to much dmg for the effort of the player using it promoting and rewarding CC a little too much.

Weapon Skills

At the moment the guardian Greatsword has numerous issues which mostly come from design choices around beta of the core game and the power creep/reworks other weapons ahve had after the launch of heart of thorns. My goal for these changes is to get the greatsword back to a state where it uesable again without being OP

• Greatsword #2: remove the projectiles from this skill. The projectiles hurt the guardian more than they help in alot of situations (be it through reflects, beign converted into enemy heals through the druid staff #5 or retaliation.)

• Greatsword #3: remove the blind on impact at the end of the leap and in return give the ability a dodge frame during the jump. One of the main reasons the greatsword is currently so lackluster is that it leaves the guardian completly exposed which in the current state of the game is like asking to be killed while not providing anywhere close to enough pressure to justify the lack of defense. There a small evade frame on this weapon could help alot without causing imbalance (currently almost every melee weapon has some kind of defensiv weapon skill). The blind of the ability currently almost never gets applied as it is incredibly easy to interrupt.

• Greatsword #5: Have the over time damage portion after connecting the projectiles be calculated with the power and not with the condition damage stat of the user. Greatsword on guardian is a pure physical damage weapon and is and will never be properly utilized in a condition build, so for more streamlined and straight forward damage calculations (as the only people that even know it calculates based of condition damage read about it in the wiki)

If any of the devs want me to elaborate on any point pls let me know.

Can u tell us why the zeal trait line on guardian wasnt looked at for ages? Currently its complete garbage for pvp as it doesnt offer enough for the utility and defense people loose from not picking the virtues traitline.

Also pls give us something that isnt a mini Llama to buy from the league vendor (currently sitting on about 400 useless league tickets)

The guardian balancing felt like they lacked any kind of vision as to where the class should go in terms of potential builds and jsut band aiding based on forum complains (though I like that greatsword got alteast started to get looked at, though it still isnt worth taking at all for pvp)

Here a few points about the guardian:

Zeal trait line

The traitline is currently in an odd place, as most of its traits are without purpose or reason to pick in most gamemodes. The main problem is that the traits in this traitline don’t seem to have an “identity” to which they belong nor impactful innergies with other traitlines or most weapons the class can use.

Based on the focus on symbols and the shattered aegis grandmaster trait the only thing that makes sense for an “identity” for this traitline is a melee oriented dps playstyle which in order for people to even consider the traitline it needs to give offensive potential for the defensiv and/or utility they give it up in return. Th following suggestions are there to push

Adept Traits:

• Wrathful Spirit: should be replaced by a new trait called Vigourous Spirits

• Vigourous Spirits: Spirit weapons have increased vitality(+50% HP) and get 10s of protection upon being summoned

• Zealous Scepter: Now also increases the projectile speed from scepter #1 by 33%(maybe 50%)

Master Traits:

• Binding Jeopardy: Include Knockback, Launch and Knockdown as triggers in additons to the current ones for this trait

• Kindled Zeal: Now grants Might(1 Stack with 5 seconds base duration) when hitting a burning enemy while wielding a melee weapon.

Grandmaster Traits:

• Expeditious Spirits: remove the burning on spirits weapon attack + add improvements to command skills:

• Hammer of Wisdom(Command): now hits up to 3 targets in a 180 radius around the target of the Commandskill

• Sword of Justice (Command): Now removes up to 2 boons from enemies struck

• Bow of Truth (Command): Now reveals and applies weakness in the target area

• Shield of the Avenger (Command): Now also applies blind(3s duration) to enemies and 2 stacks of stability(5s duration)

• Shattered Aegis: Now also removes 1 boon from all enemies that are hit by the damaging portion of this trait

Right now this trait fails connect on enemies alot as it is countered by block,evade,invuln,blurr,distortion,(not sure about blind) and ranged attack from beyond 240 range. Given this its dmg feels incredibly lackluster (for a grandmaster trait) as when picking the Zeal trait the player is giving up alot of survivability they would normally have when picking virtues over zeal. Giving it an additional effect that can be used to counter act the fairly massive amount of boons with good postioning and trait choices would help guard to have a reason to pick this trait again. (if wanted/needed I can provide numerous scenarios of how this change coudl/would play out in practical use)

Dragonhunter trait line:

Currently the master trait “Bulwark” seems really weak compared to the 2 alternatives.

Bulwark:

• Now additionaly removes the cast time from “Shield of Courage”

This would allow people to activate “Shield of Courage” while stuned (similar to how u can currently activat focus #5 on guardian while stunned currently) without removing counter- or skilled play as the shiled can’t be repositioned while stunned/knockdowned etc. This change would opeln up some build diversity as the virutes traitline becomes slightly less mandatory as a result (discussed this change with oither top guardian players in EU for about an hours till we agreed that this would have no negative impact on the games balance but rather help diversity)

Malediktus.3740:

Isn’t glorious hero armor a hidden until unlocked skin?

Thats exactly how it is. For example I own 2 of them (heavy shoulders and gauntlets in my case) both of them are obviously shown in my wardrobe, however i do not see any other pieces of the glorious hero armor.

Amulet:
The toughness is definetly needed in my eyes as aside from necros it feels like we are moving towards strong direct dmg mostly in terms of dmg sources.

Rune:
Dmg drop in practical use is roughly 4-5% from what I experienced which is worth the utility effect of traveler runes to me. (Also pack isnt perma uptime, leaving u really slow at rotations and disengaging when dont have that swiftness proc on u)

Traps:
The way I build my setup I’d have only the active daze on the heal(which already blinds the daze isnt really needed on that one) and 1 passive daze on the stab/aegis trap.
With the buffs Smite condition and contemplation of purity are no brainer picks and u sorta need judges intervention for movement.
Having only 2 possible short duration dazes isnt worth it compared to a 3s AOE IMMOB + about 2.5k dmg every 26 seconds u get from soaring devastation (even if ur heal has 6s more cd and ur passive trap has 9s more ICD).

Dmg didnt really feel lackluster(still managed up to 6k true shots) as it isn’t the main goal with that build, it is a CC bruiser that can 1v1 if u really really have to but ramps up in effectiveness once u start teamfighting.

If we were to head into a condi heavier meta I’d have a slightly different build for that (which I might post if the need arises).

If there are others questions or suggestions I’ll try to answer in time (might be with a delay since I am currently writing a paper for university so my time is limited)

@Timston
Yes and no. Marauder does provide more dmg yeah but when u are against a good organized team the extra toughness is really really worth it it does however also depend on your role in the team (the build was made with my teams comp and the role I fill in mind).

Take Marauder for ur generic dps role (27-28% more dmg than paladin if u have perma fury so likely more around 22-23% increase).
Take Paladin for high pressure situations (28% less direct dmg compared to marauder)

Hi everyone,

Kranox from More Guns Than Roses [GnR] here, after the patch there seemed to be alot of confusion as to how best build the guardian/dh.
Alot of people people have posted builds and alot of people apparently are still inisting on using traps (which except for the heal aren’t really good if u ask me) so I thought I’d share what has proved to be the most effective in a teamsetting so far.
http://gw2skills.net/editor/?vVAQJATSn8cCVDhlDBeDB8DhlEi6aZDgEQ+5j+sPL/+vAE-TZBFwAy3fgxRAAwFAgwDAYxhAAA
The build uses Paladins amulet which at the time of writing this is not available as a choice on the website.
Now about a few choices:

1. traveler runes: People might argue that these dont provide as much as other rune sets like pack and they certainly have point however with necros potentially being a thing in the meta I didn’t wanna rely on a boon from a randomproc to get some movement speed. It also helps with being able to rotate a bit better in case u do die and have to run back to ur teammates.

2. Soaring Devestation(adept DH trait):
This was a hard choice and some people might still prefer piercing light, as it provides lower heal and stab trap(trait) cooldown aswell as dazing, but soaring devestation proved vital as an additional tool for control and seemed more usefull to me in alot situations.

REMEMBER:
The patch hasn’t been out long so stuff might change.

As someone that mained guard since beta and hated having to play viper rev last season, I am quite happy with the current state of guardian.
I will try to update this as we progress into the new meta and stuff may prove to need some adjustment.

Got the item, used it and nothing happened (item gone, no title, no achievement).

Failure at implementation?

Okay everyone let me clear this up.
I talked to grouch about a week ago about this and he said the achievement is indeed bugged (didn’t make a screenshot of the conversation), so we should expect the achievement to be about getting to legend x2 not 6 times legend x1.

btw progression into legend x2 does not progress it aswell

Regards,
Kranox

I did end up spending most of the time managed to play during bwe#3 on the dragonhunter and ended only having trouble with reaper(well mostly misha but still, it feels slightly too strong atm) and scrappers (they are just plain broken…).
However sadly the dragonhunter was quite buggy during this bwe which I want to talk about first:

1. Fragments of Faith
This trap as amazing as it felt to play around with it hits more often than it’s tooltip lets u believe. It hits 1 time as soon as an enemy steps on it and 2 more times in a second aoe wave when it actually spawns the aegis fragments.

This trap even when the dmg bug is fixed is still pretty amazing synergy wise since every aegis can trigger shattered aegis and also allows u to sustain nodes quite well even when outnumbered (managed to defend about 1 min against revenant and chrono on node without too much trouble).

2. Shield of Courage
The Skill is amazing in itself however it has 1 very crucial bug that made me furious because it appeared after the specialization patch and stayed for almost 2 month.
The bug in question is Courageous Return (Master Minor in Valor) not working with Shield of Courage as it woudl normally reset the 75s cooldown on this skill when you revive an ally or rally on a 30 ICD.
This is HUGE in PvP as the bug basically punishes u for using ur defense to revive allies, pls try to fix this asap.

This should be enough about the bugs, onto improvement proposals.

1. Fragments of Faith
Really this trap doesn’t need much of buff even when the bug on it is fixed, hwoever it would be a nice quality-of-life improvement to increase the duration of the aegis fragments a bit (the old 15sec duration felt better, but since it seems u deemed it to strong how about 12seconds ?)

2. Hunter’s Ward
This skill felt horrible to use. When managed to lock some people down with it (good luck, its so kitten easy just go out of it) it felt ok, but really the casttime + root is just too much to make it fun (CD is fine given how long the rings last).
So what to do?
Simply reduce the cast time to 2sec OR if u feel simply reducing the casttime is too much for the skill remove the initial small hits and turn the skill in a simply 2 second cast that creates the ring but with a slightly increased impact dmg and cripple application equal to the cripple that the inital hits would have caused (roughly 6sec)

3. Wings of Resolve
These have mainly the problem of being way to easy to interrupt, here as other people have already suggested I think an evade might be easiest fix to this.

4. Dragon’s Maw
The effect of the trap itself is ok (maybe a small inital immob would be nice), however given its an elite skill the dmg feels lackluster.
The damage could easily be upped by 30-50% without making it op.

5. Deflecting Shot
While it does provide extra dmg for blocking enemy projectiles it feels not really great even when blocking stuff with it, therefore I’d propose to add 1 more effect in case the skill blocks an enemy projectile.
“When blocking a projectile the cooldown of this ability is reduced by 50%” or something along those lines (We know Anet has the tech for this).

6. Defenders Dogma (Dragonhunter Master Minor)
Okay I hate to sound harsh, but what the actual kitten. This trait feels bad on pretty much every level, not only does it have very little synergy but it also is counterproductive if u want use of ur f1 at any point promoting not using it at all.
Personally I would love to something like this:

Put the current effect of defenders dogma into the Bulwark(Master major) trait if u really think its worth it.

Now for the actual change there are 2 proposals:

6.1 “Blocking attacks with Shield of Courage reduces virtue cooldowns” (1sec per blocked attack)
This one would be quite fun flavor wise and also promote the skillfull use of Shield of Courage.

6.2 “Blocking attacks reduces virtue cooldowns” (1sec per block//1 sec ICD or 3sec per block// 5-7sec ICD)
Yes this might seem really strong and numbers might need to be adjusted, but it would not only synergies with the virtues in general but also promote to actually build for blocks.

Let’s make sure Dragonhunter doesn’t suck on release \o/

- Kranox

I am a little bored, so I’ll just leave a picture of mine here aswell

A few thoughts I had with our current state of knowledge concerning the Revenant:

Hammer:
The increase in damage for the weapon is nice but it sorely lacks any way to defend urself vs melee dps specs.
So how about:
Hammer #3 now leaves behind a rune on impact which can be activated within 3 seconds to shadowstep the revenant to the location of the rune.
(The teleport skill would cost 10 energy,have 1/2s cast time and 15s ICD)
or
When teleporting back to your original location with Hammer#3 u displace enemies in a 180 radius of it.

Ventari Legend:
Currently borderline useless for pvp even with increased modifiers, most of which comes down to it feeling insanly clunky to use.
Things that could help to make it less clunky gameplay wise:
1. either summon the tablet autmatically on swapping to ventari or make “Project Tranquility” instant.
2. remove the cast-time from “Ventari’s Will” (this NEEDS to happen so ventari can actually see some play in pvp and not be horrible)

Devastation Traitline:
“Focused Siphoning” feels really weak and unimpactfull for a grandmaster minor trait which brought to the following thought.
Combine “Focused Siphoning” and “Assassin’s Annihilation” into 1 trait.
The new trait would be:
Siphon life from foes that u strike, you siphon more life from foes when hitting them from behind or the side.
Life Siphon Damage: 110
Life Siphon Healing: 100
Life Siphon Damage(Behind/Side): 346
Life Siphon: 306
1s internal cooldown
[numbers based on the setup we saw in the livestream]

Grandmaster Minor: (new) “Assassin’s agility” (emphasizing the theme of swiftness in both attacks and movement for this legend)
1. Move faster while dual-wielding (25%)
or
2. Gain Swiftness when striking a foe below 50% (10sec of swiftness, 10s ICD)

There is still the issue of survivability for the Revenant but I beleive some of these points could already improve the feel of the rev quite a bit.

Rym.1469:

Roy Cronacher.1576:

We also lacked damage multipliers on the profession, so we’re taking this chance to remake the first two minor traits to help add more damage output options.

• Swirling Mists: This trait has been removed and replaced with Invoker’s Rage.
  • Invoker’s Rage: Gain 5 seconds of fury when you invoke a legend.
• Revitalizing Breath: This trait has been removed and replaced with Ferocious Aggression.
  • Ferocious Aggression: Gain 7% increased damage while under the effects of fury.

Nuuuuuuuuuuuuuu!

Why are you doing this? Swirling Mists mechanic was absolutely awesome and unique, just needed little ICD reduction and more visible orbs!

Those were actually my favourite Revenant’s traits and they had good flow and theme with Invocation line ;(
….

I personally like that they added a damage modifier but I am concerned about this aswell, because Revenants just lost more of their already lackluster survivability.
These 2 removed traits could probably get put into 1 trait and replace 1 of the current invocation adept traits or even made baseline.

The revenant needs more not less survivability since it doesnt look like we are gonna get much active defense for them.

Hello fellow guardians,
Like many of u I was rather disappointed with the possibilities that the traits of the Dragonhunter present in their current state, so I sat down and wrote down some ideas on how to improve things in a way that offers more fun and skillfull ways to customize the Dragonhunter.

Adept trait: Soaring Devastation:

• Rename “Soaring Devastation” into “Soaring Wings”
• Increase the heal amount by 100% + add a condition cleanse that removes 1 or 2 conditions in the impact area if an ally is in the landing impact area (though i could see why the condition cleanse could be too strong since we already have a master trait for it in the virtues line)
• Reduce impact radius to 180 ,because it is likely too strong with the 240 radius.

Focus here is to promote more skilled play with a strong supportive effect for actually landing the skill in the most optimal way and to compensate for the fact that the skill is way harder to properly place than the current virtue of resolve

Adept trait: Piercing Light:

• Add a 20% trap cooldown recharge trait
• OR add a 20% increase in bleeding duration

Overall I am not a fan of condition guardian in general, but this trait most definetly needs something to be appealing in anyway

Master minor trait: Defenders Dogma:

• Gets replaced by the current grandmaster trait “Hunter’s Fortification”

Defenders Dogma is a rather unimaginitve trait and rather useless to anything that is not a condition guardian, while Hunter’s Fortification is too weak to be a grandmaster in my eyes eventhough the idea is appealing

Master trait: Hunters Determination:

• Add an effect that reduces the remaining recharge of shield of courage if enough enemies are being hit by true shot
• remaining recharge of shield of courage is reduced by 5seconds if true shot(longbow #2) hits 2 enemies and by 10seconds if true shot hits 3 or more

The main thought behind this is that aside from using true shot to fight point blank the duration is too short to be really usefull, I thought it would be nice if the Dragonhunter could reduce the remaining time until he can use his shield of courage to protect himself and his allies by skillfull usage of true shot. Ultimately rewarding good postioning and skill with a satisfying benefit from it.

Master trait: Dulled Senses:

• Add: Increases cripple duration by 20% while using a longbow.
• Add: Slow lasts lasts 20% longer while using a hammer.

Dulled Senses is a rather weak trait again though its effect has its place in the Dragonhunter traits which is why I’d add weapon specific duration increases that fit the dulled sense theme and sinergies with existing weapon skills or traits like the “hammertime”-trait for Hammer in the virtues line
However I think the effect that we have now may just aswell be integrated into the grandmaster trait “heavy light” or the adept trait “piercing light”making room a new trait

New Master trait: Hunter’s Precision (meant to take the slot “dulled senses” or “Hunter’s Determination” has now):

• (Optional)Deflecting shot now reflects projectiles instead of destroying them.
• Deflecting shot recharges faster(100%, its basically a cooldown reset similar to how reaper does it with GS#2) when u destroy(or reflect) an enemies projectile with deflecting shot. This cannot occur more than twice within 10seconds
  I personally like this trait even more than the 7sec CD knockback on longbow trait and wouldn’t be sad if it were to replace it.

The very idea of defelcting shot is it being a skillshot, this trait would make it a truely rewarding one as it allows u to gain supriority against projectiles if played skillfully and what I hoped more traits and skills would focus on…. rewarding skillfull play

New Grandmaster trait: Eye for an Eye (replacing the current “Hunter’s Determination”)

• Skills that absorb/destroy projectiles now reflect them instead, the reflected projectiles have their damage increased by 10%

Just as the “heavy light” grandmaster trait gives the Dragonhunter a way to control close range skirmishes, so does this trait provide the Dragonhunter with the possibillity to become a bane to other ranged fighters by improving a variety of skills to not only protect allies from hostile projectiles but using the projectiles for himself.
The enemy would have to wait before shooting from ranged again or to switch into melee combat.

Grandmaster trait: Big game hunter.

• If tethers break before expiring, the target who’s tether is broken get crippled for 5seconds.

Small buff, because getting outside the tether range can be done easily and fast given guards lack of mobility to keep onto some classes

Greetings Kranox

ps. there are probably some mistakes in my english but its late here so try to ignore it

Stronger involvement of the community:
Anet should make use of the love people have for ur game and their artistic skills like u did in GW1.
This could be done by holding a design-a -weapon/armor/armor-piece contest which in order to minimize logistical effort and time investment for Anet could be done via fansites as a third-party-jury to filter out non serious contributions.
The people who enter the contests would asked name an accountname that will be associated to their entry.
The winning entries are being sent to Arenanet who will evaluate them and decide which ultimately get realized as skins in game (These would end up as Tier(4)-Mistvendor skins or Tier(3)-Mistvendor skins depending on how fancy/decorated/awesome they are).
Every winning entry in the contest will award the associated GW2-account a Mini-Llama.
The winning entries that are being realized in game will also be given to the people in who’s accountname the entry is associated. (So you design an awesome item and Anet makes as an ingame skin, then u would get the skin u created with out having to pvp for it [this is mainly to motivate people from all gametypes to contribute] )

Titles:
Most (class specific) pvp titles currently are way too easy to get and dont tell us anything about the amount of experience someone has with a class, people would most likely more motivated to stick to a class if there are things for them to achieve with it beyond their 150 ranked/unranked game wins. Therefore I would suggest to add new achievements for winning in unranked/ranked games for each profession that award titles(which are displayed in a different color [optional]) after each milestone :

• 250 Veteran Champion (insert class specific title like genius for engineer here) [display color: blue]
• 500 Ascended (insert class specific title here) [display color: green]
• 1000 Legendary (insert class specific title here) [display color: yellow]
• 1500 Glorious (insert class specific title here) [display color: orange/brown]
• 2500 Legendary Glorious (insert class specific title here) [display color: purple or pink (whichever is better visible)]

Seasons:

• they need to be more regular with breaks in between
• duration of a season: 4 weeks – 6week (6 weeks is already quite a long time and most people agree that the current 8 week format feels like it is too long)
• duration of the break: 2 – 3 weeks
• balance updates after 1 – 3 seasons (depending on the state of balance, though 4months is the longest we should have between updates to keep things from getting stale)
• after balance updates break-period may be extended by another 2 weeks if something proves to be out of bounds/hard to handle balancewise

Improving heart of the mists:

• improve the wall of champions to be up to date
• add something where we can check the ladder ingame(maybe where the old rank 50 – 80 rank vendors were at) [possibly with search option]
• let some people like Josh Foreman(loved SAB) improve/redesign the heart of the mists with some jumping puzzles so people can train their movement over/around obstacles (can’t stress how important movement and kiting with your surroundings in mind is in GW2)
• add activities (which would get cancelled by a Qpop)

Tutorials:
no concrete thoughts yet
(maybe an interface accesable via the pvp panel, videos would be devided into categories and the videos themselves played as ingame cutscenes)
to be updated

General Stuff:

• give players the option to use standart player models in unranked (no one should be forced to look at asuras in pvp)

At the end of this post u will find an example of a piece of concept art I made(based on the pheonix rank icon and a small conept idea) and would personally submit in a Design-A-Weapon-Contest. (was my first time ever using photoshop seriously so don’t judge it too harsh )

Thank you for your time if u read so far.
Also leave a comment with ur thoughts, additional improvement ideas and wether or not this would motivate u to play pvp more frequently.

Greetings Kranox

ps. I apologize in advance for any possible spelling or grammar mistakes I may have made. (Its late and english it not my first language)

Following is an example for how such a reward structure could look like (all numbers are just hypothetical) :

Contents of the new Mist-vendor:

• playerbase created designs(more about that in a later section)
• other new skins
• discontinued Items that were unobtainable since the removal of pvp equipment(like the tribal armor set)
• bundles containing multiple crafting bags(T1 through T6 )
• bundles of lodesstones and other currently really are crafting mats like giant eyes (maybe 10 per bundle)

Rewards at the end of a season :

• rank(1-10): 2 pieces of glorious hero armor + Mini Llama + 750 Mist-Tickets + 1 Glorious Mist Essence
• rank(10-25): 1 piece of glorious hero armor + 1 Mini Llama + 700 Mist-Tickets + 1 Glorious Mist Essence
• rank(26-100): 1 Mini Llama + 600 Mist-Tickets + 1 Glorious Mist Essence
• rank(101-250): 1 Mini Llama + 450 Mist-Tickets
• rank(251-500): 1 Mini Llama + 350 Mist Tickets
• rank(501-750): 300 Mist Tickets
• rank(751-1000): 250 Mist Tickets
• till 90% : 150 Mist Tickets
• till 70%: 100 Mist Tickets
• till 50%: 50 Mist Tickets

Rewardtiers for Tickets at the new Mist-Vendor:

• Tier (4): 600 Mist-Tickets per item + 1 Glorious Mist Essence
• Tier (3.5): 600 Mist-Tickets per Glorious Mist Essence
• Tier (3): 300 Mist-Tickets per item
• Tier (2): 200 Mist-Tickets per item
• Tier (1): 100 Mist-Tickets per item

The overall goal of this part is to give people a way of working towards a further sense of preogressing towards a goal, here for example a fancy new skin while keeping the strongly limited availibility of the glorious hero armor pieces
(Specifics for each Vendor-Tier may be added by me later)

Hi, I’d like to address the overall state of pvp in terms of rewards and longterm motivation (since addressing the balance situation with all the upcoming changes is pointless).
Before I get to the part on how to possibly improve the pvp enviroment and its reward structure, I want to take a moment to make a list of things that are in a bad,faulty or even nonexistend state:

• little motivation through unique rewards for people to try out pvp and even more importantly stick around and actually care about performing good.
• while Rewardtracks are a nice they dont offer much aside from the glorious amor and 1 back piece skin which all are really easy and fast to obtain
• currently balance updates are very few in between long time periods causing a
• currently rather stale metagame (though I hope the way u set u up the new
• specilisation system will allow for more frequent updates)
• the heart of the mists is a rather boring map and with us being forcec to Q into ranked and unranked arena games we need more things to do while waiting for 8minutes(which is the regualr Qtime for people with a higher MMR), also pls add a forge into the mists so we dont have to enter the pve world to throw items in the toilet
• new player are often lost in pvp and its complexity, thus there is a big need for ingame tutorials since alot of people dont even know where to find third party sites with helpfull videos
• we also lack basic report functions for people that afk/leave/grief by not playing actively on purpose

Proposed Improvements

Motivating the playerbase:

• people like small comsetic stuff that has some kind of recogniton value to it
• give some small visual to see how someone has done in a previous season(..more later) or how good a player is by visually displaying his mmr in some way
• the visuals would show in which percentage of the playerbase a player is:
• in 20% increments till 60%, after that increments of 10% till 80%, then 5% increments till 95% and then 2.5% increments for example
• rewards could for example be custom emotes for the % the player that is using it is in and/or titles allocated to their placement in the leaderboards (these titels could also be displayed in a different color than normal titles and are 1 time unlocks and would change every few seasons to give them some prestige)
  * Option 1: MMR-based (would avoid the possibility of grind, but harder for the players to grasp since it is invisible to us)
  * Option 2: Point-based (would require an overhaul to the current point system)

Improving the rewardstructure:
Currently pvp-seasons are uninteresting for a big part of the playerbase because very few people are actually getting rewards.
Furthermore from the just 500 people per season that get rewarded(this is first and formost too small a number to motivate people) especially given that the 500 only get Mini-Llamas which while they are great for people who like minis are not really a motivation for most people. (And only 25 receiving an actual reward in form of skins, which is ok because the glorious hero armor is supposed to have prestige, but people need something they are motivated to get)
So here is my proposition: Implement a Ticketsystem like in WvW that awards a certain number of tickets based on your performance in a season with people.

• (Optional)Addition of a new item called Glorious Mist Essence to gate the highest reward skins to people that managed to get in the top100 or bought it for a certain number of Mist-Tickets (to give the highest rewards Tier(4) a sense of prestige)
• Add 1 new Vendor to the Mists [insert name for npc here] for players to exchange their earned Mist-Tickets for rewards.
• Add 1 unique skin(armor piece or weapon) per season which will be awarded to all who manage to place in the top500, this skin will be added to the Tier(4) of the MistVendors selllist

I really like the idea and anet has some good systems in place to implement skins based on designs from their playerbase (collections, tying item progression to iteractions in the world (like skillpoints), and even mystic forge recipes).
You could take the idea even further and have the people do the design also create the journey people would go on to aquire them, or hold a contest after the design contest where people can design the journeys for the skins Anet picks to be realized in game.

Sitting on a weapon design I just finished so a contest that would let me submit it to Anet would be awesome.

Look people, instead of kittening about it try taking a look at http://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/PvP_Matchmaking_Algorithm#Configuration_2 and try to see if u can find points where the imbalance in your matches is coming from.
Justin is openly communicating with u people in order to get feedback, so try to give proper feedback so Justin can work with it.

Personally I think adding the amulets that people are using (since it doesnt do this so far i think) might help to improve the matches (had quite a few matches were i mostly got paired with zerker with noone being able to properly defend a node).

If u really want people to get together in teams, please split up the “Looking for…”-subforum, because the way it is at the moment no one in their right mind is gonna bother using it.

Hey Justin,
if u have a dc on your team, u will ultimately lose or atleast the chances of u winning drop dramatically.
So how to compensate the people that are left to fight a losing battle?
I think it would be a nice gesture to reduce the amount of ladder points the still playing people on the team with a dc by 1.
This could be done by simply increasing the parameter(that is being returned to the system/ladder) of the team(that had a dc) by 1 if the value that would be returned is <0 (or <(-1) if u want to be really sure that it isnt exploitable).
Giving +1 to the return value would open up the possibility of abuse, like people paying others to leave at the end of a match to gain more ladderpoints, i know its a sad thought but people are bad by nature.

Also sorry if my english sucks its not my native language.

Hello people,
after playing without a team for a while now I decided to give it a try again.
I have over 3,8k tournament games and mainly focus on playing bunker or dps guard, though I’m open to playing different classes.
The last time I was actively playing teamq i constantly stayed in top40 and gathered experience paying with against alot of top teams.
Ideally I am looking for a team that ambitious to reach top ranks and improve itself constantly.
If u have questions or are interested whisper me ingame or send me a mail.

Have a nice day,
Kranox

Hello everyone,
many people complain about warriors and how they think they are op. While I don´t think are OP, their burst skills feel kinda lazy in the way they are implemented therefore I have a suggestion that on the one hand adresses the spammy nature of burstskills and on the other hand might also give warriors the amout of tweaking needed so people don´t feel like they are OP.
The suggestion: Make burst skills share cooldown.
What does this mean:
- if the burst skills is missed the burst skills from both weapon sets get the usual 4sec CD.
- if the burst skills hits the burst skilsl from both weapon sets get the usual 10sec CD.
- this change would require warriors to think more carefully about the usage.
- less uptime of longbow #F1 burning field (less burning from the warri and slightly less might stacking)
- slightly less dmg output without cutting it down too severely.
- placeholder eventual thoughts.

(this is mainly focused around pvp balance and warriors with strength runes)
(english is not my native language so the might not be awesome languagewise)
(On the side of programming: I do not know how burst skills and their cooldowns are implemented codewise, however it I assume that it is most likely 1 variable for the cooldown of each weapon set or something similar, in which case it shouldn´t be too hard to implement the suggested change.(if the code is not a complete mess without documentation))

Share your thoughts!

@writetyper: y u are, intelligence gives u 3 crits after weapon switch which has a 9 sec cooldown, these crits (as i mentioned in my post above) can be used to put up some presssure and to activate the minor trait in “Virgorous Precision” which does give 5 seconds of vigor on a 10sec internal cooldown. So u have a safe 50% uptime of vigor just from ur crits and on the other hand some skills of the guardian can hit for quite some decent dmg (staff 2, mace 3 just to name some).
U can basically kill every glassy spec like thiefs and mesmer easily.

(All experiences on a standart 0/1/6/6/1 bunkerbuild with cleric)

Just as Phantaram said there are no real changes to bunkerguard except for the sigil choices. Currently running energy/intelligence sigils in both weapon sets has proven itself pretty usefull. Thanks to the reliable crits from sigil of intelligence it´s possible to put out a decent amount of pressure(up to 4k crits on mace #3) and activating the minor trait that gives vigor on cooldown without loosing any defense as the build has remained the same.

My Guardian in PvP

Armor:
PvP Grenth Hood
PvP Nightmare Pauldrons
PvP Primeval Warplate
PvP Phalanx Ganutlets
PvP Protector´s Chausses
PvP Protector´s Footgear

Colors:
Charred, Toxin

Has someone more information about the chances of getting the fused gauntlets in pvp? I´m currently at 85 tournament chests and still have yet to get a single one of them.