Guild Wars 2

Just by increasing the attack and movement speed of pets it would be a lot better, their active F2 spells could also easily be optimised to be more responsive on top of the cast times being reduced. Or like Chrispy.5641 said in the post above, make pets just be able to attack while moving

None of this should affect mob AI and should make Ranger pets a lot more effective and fun to use. I don’t have an answer for pet viability for zerg fights though, maybe general pet toughness could scale in a lesser but similar way as Veterans and Champions scale with number of players around?

Hey man, good video’s

Do you use the same build in WvW? Would you be so kind and share how you(’d) run a trapper build for WvW?

Here’s an idea, why not make these work more like engineer kits do?

The problem with conjured weapons is that you lose your 20 normal weaponskills and when it’s gone, there’s a minute cooldown on them.

If they would function like kits do they’d prolly see a lot more use, you have to sacrifice a precious utility slot to use one. Perhaps a cooldown as long as your attunement swap would work with balancing this, or just have it available as a “kit” for as long as you have charges of it, that disappear with actions like they do now and then start a cooldown.

Thoughts?

Couple of good ideas in here, keep it up One thing though, if the condition has to be accessible to other professions it’s going to be hard to follow themes like Disease and Plague. I think with the confusion nerfs the Mesmer would be the logical candidate to share this condition with, so it’s good to keep that in mind.

I was thinking about something along the lines of Enfeeble, reduce target stats by 10% while it’s active and knocks the target down when it runs out or gets cleansed. Or maybe daze target for ¼ second each time he cleanses a condition. This could tick somewhere between poison and burning.

A Necromancer themed condition I would love to have is Pending Doom, target gets 5 stacks each second and takes damage equal to the number of stacks on target, whenever it reaches 25 stacks or gets cleansed. If it damages when it reached 25 it knocks the target down.

An Acid based condition could be cool too, maybe something that damages inanimate objects because this is a huge problem for condition based classes at the moment. As well as sharing the bleed cap with other players, but this is something for another thread :X

Well I’m agreeing that the Scepter could use work, the #1 attacks are not very strong, there’s no CC and some things are hard to land on skilled opponents, but all the skills itself are ranged.. Like I said before, if you equip a Dagger offhand you’ll gain spells that are melee orientated

Chaosky.5276:

I want reliable ranged damage, not the near-melee combat that the scepter currently promotes.

There isn’t a single ability in the Scepter toolset that promotes any type of melee-play.

You seem to have problems with the skills that come from using an offhand Dagger, which is indeed a near-melee type weapon, by design.The Focus on the other hand is not melee orientated and neither is the Staff. If you don’t want a near-melee experience, I suggest you don’t equip a near-melee orientated weapon :P

I posted it in another thread as well but Dragon’s Tooth being ground targeted would absolutely be the right move, especially considering that right now it disobeys line of sight. Both the Necromancer and the Mesmer have had spells nerfed/fixed that behaved the same way. If they do the same to Dragon’s Tooth it will become even harder to hit than it already is..

If people think there would be too much ground targeted spells, why not have Phoenix follow your target instead of being ground targeted? I’m also hoping they will fix the spell so the animation of the returning Phoenix that procs the Vigor no longer interrupts a dodge. This can cause you to die, or to mess up an Evasive Arcana dodge effect.

Flamestrike does need a change, it’s a very dull spell in both animation and execution.. Maybe turning it into a chain would be good, something that has minor splash damage and applies an aoe burn.

Ice Shards could just do with a damage increase tbh. But if Shatterstone would chill people while it’s growing it would make sense to have a proper cast time and bar, it already locks you out of casting as it is, but then it would be easier to use. Perhaps increase the range to 240 and increase the vulnerability to 5 stacks.

Rock Barrier to be turned into an Aura and a significant increase in damage when you fire it with Hurl would be good enough too, then you’d have to choose between using it for the added armor or for damage. Or for both if you’re good enough at timing it with regard for the cooldown. Dust Devil would be the logical choice for the second control ability, maybe a knockback or knockdown is just what it needs.

Scepter is the only mainhand that has no CC, yet it’s the weapon that would have the most use for it, as some of the abilities can be hard to land, especially against a skilled opponent.

Anyway, great post! I love using a scepter on my Ele but always felt like it could use some tweaking, compared to the Dagger and Staff. Hopefully without making it overpowered

off topic: well, it’s just my personal opinion but I would love it if we could cast Dragon’s Tooth ground targeted like Phoenix and have Phoenix just fire at your target. I think it would be a lot more useful like that. Phoenix should then just follow the target until it hits, the player dodges or runs out of range and then return, giving the caster vigor and NOT interrupt his dodge-roll :P

Awesome as it is for the current Dragon’s Tooth to disobey line of sight, I’m afraid that this will change in the future. Necromancer’s Epidemic and Corrupt Boon spells also got changed the same way and before that it were the Mesmer phantasms. This change will make it even harder to hit than it already is. I really hope they won’t break the set instead of fixing it. S/D could do with a tune-up.

Yes, this is an extremely annoying bug. I’ve bugreported it a long time ago but nothing changed so far.

I also like to play S/D and combo 6 blast finishers into a monster stack of might, but this bug can make it very clunky at times. It actually killed me several times too.

What I changed is to cast Dragon’s Tooth before Ring of Fire because it has such a long time before it hits and just use Phoenix at point blank range to proc the animation instantly. Then switching to Earth, dodge to proc Evasive Arcana into Earthquake into Churning Earth, with Arcane Wave mixed in somewhere.

This also happens for other classes btw, skill animations cancelling a dodge roll. This actually allowed Guardians to shorten their #1 chain attack when using a Hammer for a while. I really hope this gets fixed sometime soon. What I hope for actually is to switch the targeting system of Dragon’s Tooth and Phoenix, but that’s off topic :P

What I personally feel like is missing in the S/D toolset:

- It lacks an aura. Perhaps change Rock Barrier so it counts as one
- Flamestrike’s (fire #1) direct damage component needs an increase or a shorter cast time. (minor)
- Dragon’s Tooth (fire #2) could land a little faster, or make it ground targeted. This would allow it to hit easier as you can place it in anticipation of where someone is going. Because people are almost always moving, this thing drops inherently behind your target. They could even make Phoenix (fire #3) track it’s target and effectively swap the ground targetting system with these 2 spells.
- Shatterstone (water #2) locks you out of casting for what feels like an eternity, if it were made a true instant cast, or get a small cast time/bar, it would make it more useful. (also minor)

I like playing it regardless, because it feels more technical, more elegant. It’s harder to make it work, but I get a bigger sense of accomplishment when I get the ball rolling as opposed to D/D. With these changes I wouldn’t miss D/D everytime I play it

Meet Micarace, my drow priestess and manipulator of elements.

I’ve been going back and forth from D/D to S/D and I enjoy playing both, but one thing I really miss when playing S/D is lack of an in-combat swiftness (less uptime on fury too).

Is there a workaround for this I’m missing? I don’t really want to sacrifice a utility spot for Signet of Air, I’m already hard-pressed on utilities because of the arcane spells. Is Glyph of Elemental Harmony when attuned to air the best choice?

http://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Leeching_Venoms

These sorts of consumables should be disabled in wvw to make things less gimmicky. just allow 2 consumables like a sharpening stone and a foodbuff and that’s it. no things that either work with traits in some way or give someone access to things their class doesn’t usually have, like stealth for example. You can do game-breaking things with that kitten

http://youtu.be/z5OXON8vIaA

/dance on corpse

akamon.2769:

@all – in regards to runes, what about a 2x water, 2x monk and 2x major water? (i originally ran 2x major sanctuary but thinking of switching to 2x major rune for the extra little healing). vs 3 water and 3 monk, the trade off would be gain 10% boon duration, but lose 85 healing power.

I’m not entirely sure about this, but the way Condition Duration works is that it rounds down to whole numbers, so if for example a bleed you put up lasts for 5 seconds and you add 60% boon duration to that, you come to 8 seconds duration. Adding another 10% to that would give you 8,5 seconds duration but considering the game rounds it down, it would still be at 8 seconds and you would only see result in having 20% more, making it last 9 seconds.

If I’m not mistaken it works the same with Boons and considering most boons didn’t get an extra second from getting +10% extra Boon duration over 60%, except for the boons from Save Yourselves and the Regeneration from Focus #4 and Hold the Line. Considering the nigh permanent uptime on Regeneration we have already, I went for the healing bonus instead with 3 water / 3 monk.

As for using 2x water and 4x altruism runes, that should be perfectly viable! The trade-off is basically 50 healing vs 3 stacks of might to nearby allies when using a heal skill. The might boons last for 10 seconds, 16 seconds with 60% increased boon duration. So around 50% uptime if you cast your heal on every cooldown, giving an average of 50 power and condi dmg to everyone affected.

I might actually swap to that on my elementalist, as I like using Ether Renewal (heal) which has a 15 second cooldown and I run with +50% boon duration atm, giving it a very high uptime..

Christos de Soufre.3802:

It’s meant to be a pretty selfish build; it just has the fortunate bonus of being a reasonable support build as well.

I think it’s support capabilities are more than reasonable tbh, I think the typical altruistic healing builds are more selfish :P

jerhog.2814:

How well does this build hold up in dungeons?

Very well, I’ve run a few dungeons with it like Arah, AC, TA, CoF and CoE and it went smooth. You have to walk out and dodge back in sometimes to heal your allies with Selfless Daring but compared to the Crithammer build for example you bring a lot more healing and things to the group! For some fights I use the scepter, I sometimes swap out the Hammer or mace, it’s very versatile!

I’ve also ran with it in small group WvW and in Bigger group organised wvw and both were awesome! I love to play my Guardian to actually guard and support my allies and I think this build does that best and there’s lots of things working for this build. High retaliation uptime, very good heals, fairly decent mobility due to double swords, the damage is meaningful, medium at best burst, counter-burst abilities, condi removal, stability, etc.

I did have a hard time switching out of my Staff (which I only use for out of combat swiftness now) and out of Empowered Might, but I really don’t miss it. The thing with those might stacks is, that you can’t consistently predict when they burst and when that might has the most impact and you need to stand still and channel for 4 seconds to give it to them, while they have to be close enough to get it.. The staff itself is very weak in meaningful damage, the area denial is nice but a big niche.

Anyway /rant off, thanks again for the build! If I was a hat-wearer, I’d def tip it to you!

Christos de Soufre.3802:

I use Mango Pie (the regen+vital food). I plan to try the 40% endurance regen food when I have the funds available though. Would love it if someone that has money to blow could compare them and let me know how it goes.

I’m running an identical build, with those consumables and I love them, I do however use 2 parts (chest and boots) with power-toughness-vitality because I wanted to stick to 15k health. All the rest of the gear is cleric’s and sapphire. I used to run 100 power 70 vitality food, so this makes up for that lost health. I used some napkin math to check if major runes of sanctuary were worth using but only the regen from focus #4 and hold the line gained an extra tick, I dont think the extra second on the boons you get from save yourselves is worth sacrificing 100 healing power.

Thanks for inspiring me into using a healing setup again, I tried it a long time ago and didn’t like it, but I was too green with the guardian class and couldn’t get it to work, I tried to use the symbols too much for healing and didn’t focus enough on the dodges and boons. After that, I’ve been running with tanky crit builds and I always used a staff in at least one of my setups. I now only swap to staff when I’m out of combat for swiftness, I really dislike swapping out stand your ground for retreat, it almost feel like I’m wasting a utility slot :<

Hostility.4961:

Only guys that get it somewhat is Icarius and Icc lol. I like your agressive approach Icc and i did love full on dmg of guardians with teh correct items altho its sad we cant get away as easy as other classes.

My point exactely, you ignore the good points being made and you are all negative.

I wish you the best of luck in finding a different class and I hope you will adjust your attitude and way of seeying things and stop being so kitten negative. Move on, you’re just looking for confirmation that it is not you but the class you’re playing and that’s not the case

You are grossly exaggerating and putting all of your focus on the downsides of the Guardian class and ignore any good point made against your view.

Each class has strengths, weaknesses and general purposes and each particular build further defines the type of character you’re playing. Guardians are very strong in a supporting role while being very durable and dealing meaningful damage. The downside to this is it’s rather limited mobility and lack of high burst.

The problem you seem to be having is not being able to get out of already lost battles and/or fighting big zergs with inferior numbers. Maybe you need to choose your battles more wisely and/or group with different people. It’s probably also a good idea to change your philosophy of the class, the Guardian is not a one man army that can do everything all of the other classes can do. None of the other classes can do that either, you’ll only be disappointed if you will try to play like that. There is no ‘holy trinity’ in this game but there are very defined roles that classes can fulfill, whether that is roaming, bursting, utility (healing/supporting/controlling), front line fighting and so on, I found the Guardian to be most useful with their group utility, front line control and durability. A D/D Elementalist is clearly more of a roamer type of character for example. While there are a lot of similarities in their role, they have completely different approaches to try and achieve that.

I think we play on the same server (Seafarer’s Rest) and I spoken with you briefly this afternoon, but I do not have the same problems you are having. You need to change your view and attitude because it’s all negative and you will only feel bad and frustrated if you go on like this. Perhaps the Guardian isn’t your class, roll something else but don’t blame it on the class being bad, but on the way you want to play the game and the Guardian not being able to fulfill that role.