Guild Wars 2

I would have to agree that signet of mercy/ spirit weapons need help.

As far as Spirit weapons go they are simply just way to fragile. the shield of the Avenger is a very nice skill however it dies in seconds and in my opinion shouldn’t be susceptible to AOE damage so that it cant just be killed instantly. So the shield actually has to be targeted to receive damage. this would be a reasonable tweak. and an easy one at that.

Well first off what playstyle are you? PVE,PVP, WvW… THen are you more defensive (self), supportive,Offensive?

I have been looking at a consecration build that is Viable however im a WvWer so it might be different if you dont play WvW. The hard part with WvW is that you have to have mad condi removal… i Have started to try and make some fun viable builds that isnt mainstream because i have always found whatever to be mainstream as pretty boring and really simple.

But ya what are your goals and ill try to help out

everything is relative to your play style. i run with around 3k armor 1k healing but again its relative. so i cant really give u an answer. if u say what u want to do in a more specific way i might be able to help

first of all i would remove Glacial Heart because the randomness of the proc combined with the CD makes it pretty terrible and not worth the points. otherwise its a pretty standard build… toughness is decent i definatly wouldnt go over 2k as an absulute max.

however you have balanced your stats pretty well

that looks decent. i would recomend making sure u have at least 40 or 45% crit for the empowerd might you might even want to consider going higher crit espetially since u just pve and u can get away with glass cannon sometimes however i never encourage ppl to go full glass.

the build u have right hear is definately more of a tankier build tho so going into radiance of zeal is really just up to u and how much damage u want to do.

the point is that the hammer is just fine please dont reduce the damage. the hammer is perfect as is and + u can get pretty much perma protection other ways if speced/ set up right.

Again the hammer is good just the way it is

retal works wonders in any situation except against confusion because u will find yourself melting away from your own retal stack which really sucks lol. the main thing tho is learn how to cure confusion.

your setup does work but guardian has alot of passive condi removal capacity with purity, signet of resolve, Pure of voice (amazing trait) also absulote resolution gives great condi removal + the passive healing. if u use renewed focus u can remove 6 conitions with your Virtue of resolve so Absolute resolution plus Pure of voice is some amazing condi removal and if u run that way i wouldnt recommend stacking – condition duration becasue its kind of a waste with all your other condi removal tools.

However, if you are running a more dps focused play style then going -Condition duration makes it so you dont have to spend as many trait points focused at conditions so its really up to you and what your goals are for the build

Dynnen.6405:

I was quite disappointed to see that Guards weren’t getting any love this patch or even mentioned as needed fixing. I love the class, but there are some things that need to be addressed.

1) Scepter 1
2) Sword 3
3) Shield CD compared to other shield classes.
4) Zeal/Radiance tree traits/stat allocations (especially the GM traits)
5) 4 second daze that thieves can steal from us
6) Hammer 2 needs to be adjusted just like Greatsword 3.

(EDIT: Removed the GS5 bug, added #6)

wow all of these abilities have amazing uses and by far hammer 2 is amazing and iif u are complaining about it u are obviously doing something wrong or move to another class becasue guard is not for u

akamon.2769:

i’ve been tinkering with a symbol build in WvW and it works pretty darn well in large numbers so far. running with hammer and mace. it would definitely be a lot more devastating if the symbol was placed with the first hit, if even on contact. :OO

perhaps that in itself could be a trait. so not something innate to the hammer, but with a choice of going for that instead.

this is somewhat reasonable but imo still a little questionable

Brutaly.6257:

Kryptonite.7580:

Brutaly.6257:

Increase untraited size of the symbol (all symbols should have larger untraited diameter) and apply the symbol on the first hit of the chain and we are as close to perfect as we can be.

The playstyle is very different from the other weapons we have, this doesnt make the hammer bad.

I respect alot of your stuff and u guardian pretty well but putting the symbol at the beginning of the chain would make it unbalanced. there is a reason they put the symbol at the end of the chain it makes it so it cant be spammed nearly as much. they cant give the guardian an ability that pretty much guarantees perma protection all by itself

Yes if it was triggered by just swinging it would be seriously unbalanced but not if it only triggers on contact.

In pve this change would have minor impact since in pve you have 100% protection uptime from the chain and one trait. The real impact would be in pvp and ofc its a buff, it allows to protect ourself and the team much faster.

But the real impact is that symbolbuilds in wvw would be much more valid. Atm symboltraits are used in wvw mainly to get more AH proccs, not to increase the efficiency of the damage component and protection in symbol of protection.

The main issue, which i forgot to write down, is that 2h mastery doesnt increase dps, only availability, and i can understand that the pve centric players find this boring, i know i do, spamming two skills over and over.

again it would help you stack protection for allies easier and that is exactly the point it allows one to stack protection way to easily. protection is one of the best boons out there and to allow it to be perma is a little ridiculous.

and either way to make symbols more viable to wvw you have to change pretty much everything about them. the only mediocre one is SoW but only if u have enough control to keep the player in them.

if they want to change symbols to somehow be a somewhat viable build in pvp then go for it but this is not the way

SoW works as a blast finisher however there seems to be some sort of cooldown or bug because when blasting with a hammer #2 (Mighty Blow) and then instantly switching over to focus and blasting with SoW you almost always wont get the blast from SoW. also in laggy situations sometimes it doesnt register the combo field and thus doesnt do anything with the blast finisher

Indure.5410:

Kryptonite.7580:

you are right the hammer is fantastic but i guess im going to have to say this again its not the tool that is the issue its the user

I’m not sure how it is a user problem and not a tool problem. In PVE, every single attack on the GS is universal enough to be use during every fight, and almost all of them increase your damage output. While the hammer on the other hand, reaches optimal damage output (combo fields aside) with just its auto attack. Its 3-5 abilities have very little use in general PVE content. Of course, they are situationally helpful, but for 90% of content, CC abilities aren’t really needed or mobs are immune to them.

Adding small secondary effects to the abilities would give reason to cast them in PVE.

hmm so you probably havent ever heard of the concept of every weapon isnt like the rest they all have their strengths and weaknesses. Hmm something to think about.

i dont understand why people think that having a weapon have everything is honestly a good idea. there would be people winning in seconds. oh he is to overpowered… same typical gamer that doesnt actually think about the repercussions of what they ask for.

Indure.5410:

I agree that the hammer is fantastic, but it could use some slight changes especially in terms of PVE so that it encourages the use of more than just 2 skills. It would be nice if Zealot’s Embrace would either add a blind, a small stack of vulnerability, or a small duration swiftness boon

you are right the hammer is fantastic but i guess im going to have to say this again its not the tool that is the issue its the user

Brutaly.6257:

Increase untraited size of the symbol (all symbols should have larger untraited diameter) and apply the symbol on the first hit of the chain and we are as close to perfect as we can be.

The playstyle is very different from the other weapons we have, this doesnt make the hammer bad.

I respect alot of your stuff and u guardian pretty well but putting the symbol at the beginning of the chain would make it unbalanced. there is a reason they put the symbol at the end of the chain it makes it so it cant be spammed nearly as much. they cant give the guardian an ability that pretty much guarantees perma protection all by itself

hammer is amazing… i.e. the issue is probably the user

yes it will but only 1 will become a boon

Well it depends on if u are a PvEer or PvPer. in PvE u can get away with using WoE however even in PvE i would never use it. the healing it gives you is minimal at best and if you play pvp or wvw just forget it. you will be moving around so much it doesnt even matter

remember there is a 1 second internal CD on EM

Well first of all to give you the best feedback telling us what your goal of a build would be very useful.

That said i would stray away from Pure of Heart because u get a total of 3 aegis’ (1 is innatly on you from virtue of courage passive, 1 from VoC activation, and 1 from hitting 50% Health [if traited] which i would encourage). The first Aegis is negated because you should already be at full health since you are just entering combat. that leaves only 2 Aegis’ which is pretty crappy if u ask me. You can invest to get more aegis’ through utilities and runes however you give up to much else that would be more beneficial.

Secondly guardians are one of the few classes that can stack Retal very well and can keep it on if speced right. going into virtues 15 points gives you retal with every virtue activation which if u use your virtues strategically provides some good sustainable retal. Guardians are a great class becasue of all the passive damage that you can do through retal and even burning (yes some might say that burning sucks but damage is damage).

I would encourage your to mix your armor or your gear so that you have tanking and dps gear because if u go glass cannon any smart player knows how to mitigate your burst and the glass cannon falls over and dies when they lose that momentum.

Renewed Focus is by far the best IMO because of the virtue recharge and the invuln can be used to negate some pretty hefty burst. the tomes can be used in some situations but Renewed is great all around.

Also AH (Altruistic Healing) is a great and very powerful trait especially when your still learning guardian. However, i might encourage you once you get to a comfortable point with your guardian to branch out from it. AH is defiantly an amazing trait tho so dont get me wrong but the guardian wont fall apart without it either (at least if you play it wisely). So as i said AH is an amazing stepping stone

Also searing flames is amazing in theory but the CD on it absolutely kills it with all the boons being thrown around makes it not worth the investment. however if you could control when you removed a boon that might be alot better however this is not the case so u remove 1 boon randomly at a random time then it cant happen for another 20 seconds.

Also i would encourage you to look into Absolute Resolution in Virtues 20 point slot. It is amazing the cond removal and the added passive healing. that would also free up your #8 utility slot which could be very useful depending.

Another side note Hammer/GS is by far the best retal stacking weapon set probably even in the game so make sure u are utilizing those combo fields/finishers.

its good to see at least some of the community has common sense… the typical make my class the best arguments get very old lol

interesting so it sounds like what your saying Knighthonor is that you dont want RoW to have any counters. lets think a little on this… everything needs a counter. balance is all about having strengths and weaknesses stop crying about these trivial things if you thought about it for a little longer than you obviously have already you might and let me emphasize the word might understand the basics of a checks and balances system.

with your adjustments it should be renamed Ring of Doom because its an almost guarantee death to anyone caught in it. already with the RoW in its current state if one is able to trap a person or multiple people in the ring they are either downed from all the heavy damage that they cant really dodge because the ring isnt large enough to dodge (however if you try to dodge u bounce off the sides of the ring and ohh look at that a free knockdown). So they get to sit there for 5 seconds of pain and even as a support guardian one can do some serious damage in that time or they had some serious hurt laid on them. So in conclusion, to remove the possibility of escape of even to have it as a ground targeting skill it becomes an insane ability.

People never learn lol. Not every class or every weapon set can be the same they each have properties that they are good and bad at… Deal with it and learn to play with it or pick another class and test your luck with your luck with that

the first thing u need to know about Anet is that they have some of the most inaccurate descriptions and combat logging systems. Anet’s combat log is missing more than half of the damage that you actually give/take. The +6000 that you see is the total damage that whirling wrath it will continually add up the damage with each hit. that is why you saw 1000, 2000, … 6000.

be very careful with the combat log and discriptions because when it comes to this part of the game anet doesnt exactly shine haha

the thing u have to understand with clerics gear is that it isnt going to make u a super crazy spike healer… cleric gear shines when you are able to play your class when you learn how to/when to dodge/block and mitigate the incoming damage. clerics hear is amazing but if u just stand there and get pounded on expecting your healing gear to save your kitten then your mistaken. CLerics gear helps all your little heals like virtue of resolve, regen, AH, Dodge roll heal, etc it provides substantial healing making you able to endure over time rather than 1 burst heal every now and then.

Well I have been toying around and have ended up liking 0/0/10/30/30 (my old build was a 0/0/30/20/20). But I am mainly a ’group support guard that builds himself to not be totally useless if I need to do a 1v1 or small scale PvP.

OK so if I had to choose between gs or hammer (for wvw) what would u choose and y

No it removes conditions as long as your in the field

For am while now ihave been struggling with what weapon set combo to use. Lately I have been using gas/hammer and the synergy of these weapons are amazing however I still feel like I’m not satisfied. I was thinking of doing gs and mace/focus this provides blocks to protect against more attacks however it also applies burning every time I block and might to myself as well.

Give your opinions. Tell me what you like and why so I can try and figure this out. Thank a lot for everyone’s time

anyone know if healing seed from our racial heals everyone in range or just up to 5 ppl?

No I’m talking about DR on stats not loot but I guess well have to test all this stuff out ourselves

lol wow that wiki page is terrible. as you said Exiled there is no reason we should know the DR’s of this game i guess lol

if anyone has any future incite on this please share and thank you.

Can anyone tell me or point me to a site that I can see/read up on the diminishing returns/stat caps for this game.

OK sorry it took so long to get back to u guys but the conditions I pulled to myself kept their duration

lol almost every issue you stated is totally fixable your post here shows that u obviously want a game like wow that basically plays the game for you how easy it is… if u want to get better with the class stop complaining and start thinking

ya the problem is getting something that does alot of conditions and allows me to take it slow enough to see the durations before and affter i strip the conditions so i cant really test it in spvp and it also requires another person… so if someone knew that would be great otherwise i have to dedicate ssignificant time into testing it lol

If i have -20% condition duration and i use Save yourself to absorb all the conditions from my allies, pulling them to myself, will i get the same duration my allies had on them or will my -20% condition removal apply to the conditions that i just pulled onto myself?

Thanks for any help on this.