Guardian as a whole is a bunch of bugs in a bag now.
You havent played ranger in a while with vanilla pets havent you?
Basically 50% of the classes are bugged.
You can always get a different pet however as in the long run much of what they do is done by another pet or simply cosmetic.
Arken as an ESL level player lays out the guardian problems decently well however, if not going into detail about all of them.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EedZ5kFAvSw
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7q21IgXEppM
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_uyjBUQjeN8
I was running all shouts with mender’s ammy, pure of heart, virtues line, and DH line. I felt like I had decent sustain even when focused. It may fall short of ele/druid support, I don’t know/don’t play them, but I won 4/5 matches and felt like I contributed a lot in team battles.
It may be “Decent” but its still far outshined by scrapper/druid/ele.
Best advice would be learn to play them then try them out, you will be able to achieve so much more with the same or less effort while bringing things the guardian cannot like CC, mobility, projectile blocks/reflects & in the case of the scrapper stealth and reveals as well.
Just another of the many many many minor things they could change on the guardian for moderate quality of life improvements.
Don’t expect them to ever do it though.
And don’t expect them to change the 50% of traits, 60% of utility skills that are absolute crap either.
I run a shout dh with staff/mace shield and does better than meditrapper,you can 1 vs 2 untill help comes(exept if you get a mesmer/warr+ necro vs you….thats a fast death due to the amount of daze stuns),only problem is f2 can be stopped in mid air and f3 can be stopped but thats not the problem,the problem is that it you get the full cd on them and that doesnt seem right……
As I said above
Everything a guardian can do is done better by someone else, often while doing the job better and providing things the guardian cannot.
For instance a shout guard/DH’s job is done better by a druid, ele or scrapper who does the same job while providing projectile reflects/blocks, CC & condition damage if need be. Not to mention much greater mobility and even stealth & reveals in the scrapper’s case.
They should buff Pure Of Voice trait to convert 2 conditions into Boons instead of just 1. Then with trooper runes it would mean cleansing 3 condis per shout.
With the current condi meta this would help shout guards a lot.
Now i would prefer condi application to be reduced rather than more power creep but since Anet won’t listen, buffing Pure of Voice is a decent option.
still wouldn’t be good.
As a guardian you pretty much have to have meditations because of the need for sustain from monk’s focus.
Altruistic healing tries to provide sustain but fails horribly because you cannot consistently have 3+ allies nearby.
If they changes altruistic healing to provide a larger heal on shout (Similar to warriors) then lowered the shout cool downs yet again then shouts would be good.
But they would also need to change the soldier/trooper rune & pure of voice so that they took effect before the shout, otherwise save yourselves would continue to be a suicide button due to the condi meta.
Condi reapers now and DH past season are/were definitely the most OP classes
If your serious you need to take some serious time to learn guardian weaknesses.
Guardian & DH is extremely easy to counter if you just pay attention & always has been.
are good starts, Arken is an ESL level player and lays out the weaknesses.
After that read the guide for guardians, the amount of problems with the classes design are stupifying,
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The OP is actually quite right
This man is an ESL level player and lays out the guardian problems fairly well https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7q21IgXEppM
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_uyjBUQjeN8
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=T5VrnYTCbzk
The only place a guardian is really any good is very low level PvP where enemies are not coordinated and do not pay attention.
I’ve been playing a shout DH for a bit. So far it’s not bad. Great team support with boons and condi cleanse, decent sustained damage, and some sustain.
Everything the shout DH can do is done much much better by an ele or scrapper while providing more CC, support, reflects & or mobility or even stealth.
The same goes for offensive builds where scrapper/druid/rev/zerker warrior are concerned.
There is literally no reason to want a guardian on your team because everything it does is done better by someone else, often while providing more things it cannot like CC, reflects, mobility, condi pressure etc…
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In case any dev is actually reading this he is being sarcastic.
After 4 years thats just what we guardian players have come to expect from the developers, nerfs being called buffs.
Honestly the problem is 2 fold
1: That some specs just don’t have access to a high enough amount of cleanses & or resistance. (Others on the other hand just crap it out so often that condi specs do very little to them unless they can remove boons & CC as well)
2: Most condition builds can re apply the condition stacks in mass (Condi bomb) before many specs are anywhere near getting their cleanses off CD.
Conversely Resistance does hard counter most condition builds very well.
What I would suggest is slightly lowering the CD’s of various cleanses slightly then a change to resistance.
For resistance change the following
1: Make it reduce all condition damage by a set % and make the person immune to control effects (Weakness/cripple/blind/fear etc..)
2: After change number 1 increase access to resistance (lower CD’s and more abilities applying it) and the number of classes that can apply it.
This would mean that resistance would be more widely available to reduce condition damage but it would not hard counter it to such a degree.
Anything other then meditations/traps will not work for 1 simple reason
That reason is guardian is completely reliant on the trait Monk’s Focus in order to even have the same kind of sustain that many zerk wearing specs have.
It all goes back to the fact that 50%+ of the traits and utility skills are utter crap & the choices for sustain outside of meditations are even worse.
The only real way the build could have any sort of sustain would be to grab pure of heart and menders with full honor traits.
Even then the sustain would be sub par compared to several classes and the support it would bring would be crap compared to a ele/druid who would also have more damage & or CC
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Really all they need to do is change the shield trait so that instead of toughness it causes shield #5 to also grant several seconds (4-5) of resistance to nearby allies.
Or they could make it give retaliation & regeneration (say 4 seconds each).
Either way would be an improvement over the toughness which is outdone by strength in numbers which is in the same tier & line.
I wont argue that all MMO’s have balance problems for PVP, its obvious that they do.
The thing is there is just so much that is bad with the guardian & so many little things that they could do (even ignoring all the big things) that would stand to bring the class up to par.
The fact that they just ignore so many broken or poorly designed things that could be fixed in rather simple means i just a shame on them as a company.
i dont know what meta say but the most wins is S3 i have with my trap guard the most thiefs still dont know how to evade them
If people are dying to a trap guard they are playing badly or a thief.
Traps are very easy to avoid as none of them are unblockable now and are very easy to either block/evade or send pets through to pop them.
That combined with the many many many design flaws/problems, scaling problems, weak skills etc.. the guardian has equates to it being a much much better idea to have a ele, engi or rev on your team (even as a second of) then bring a guardian.
my main is druid and ele but i check my guard to see how it works in this season and to tell you the truth that was my best games
Again if someone is dying to traps they are either playing badly or a zerk thief.
None of the traps are unblockable anymore that means anyone with blocks, evades a dodge or a person who sends in a pet before hand can make them useless.
In the end all DH is good for is nuking idiots & uncoordinated hot join ppl who dont know how to dodge.
For anything else your better off having a ele/druid if you want support grab a scrapper/thief/rev, if you want power damage/CC or a hybrid because they fill that role better while offering things the DH cannot.
(Many long time guard players have swapped over to these and found they can get better results for less effort due to not having all the design flaws & bad traits/skills)
Heck now if you want selfish sustain while bringing spike or CC warrior is also better.
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i dont know what meta say but the most wins is S3 i have with my trap guard the most thiefs still dont know how to evade them
If people are dying to a trap guard they are playing badly or a thief.
Traps are very easy to avoid as none of them are unblockable now and are very easy to either block/evade or send pets through to pop them.
That combined with the many many many design flaws/problems, scaling problems, weak skills etc.. the guardian has equates to it being a much much better idea to have a ele, engi or rev on your team (even as a second of) then bring a guardian.
What’s nice about sword auto attack is that the 3rd chain attack has a high melee range… I think, if AN wants one swing to be a projectile, go ahead and make all 3 chain attacks a projectile. Let them all have a range of 300 too
Then all 3 of them would have a narrow cone causing them to miss if the target was moving.
They would like the 3rd also often miss if you or the target are on any sort of incline.
The much better solution is to make them all melee & to change the 3rd attack on the sword so that the projectiles are much faster or so that it does something else entirely.
No it shouldn’t be a projectile and it never should have been one.
Because its a projectile it can be reflected
But because it has such a narrow cone & is a projectile it will rather often miss, especially if you or your target is on any sort of incline.
But its just one of the many many many things on guardian that need fixed.
Things like
1: 50%+ of the traits being crap nobody in their right mind wants to use for anything.
2: Multiple Major flaws with multiple weapon skills (only one that doesn’t really have a major flaw is the greatsword & even that can be argued on)
3: More then half the utilities being in a state where nobody really wants to use them & almost 80% of them sucking for PvP.
&
4: Numerous mechanics being severely outdated or just plain bad since launch, ranging from static symbols, virtues being sub par signets & AEGIS blocking only a single attack (If they would simply make it block all attacks for a 1/2 to 1 second after being triggered it would be amazing)
Don’t expect Anet to change any of this though, according to them the guardian is “In a good spot”.
To which we should all respond bullkitten if the guardian was in a good spot just about every other class would get the crap nerfed out of it to give it company.
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I actually love off hand dagger for the following reasons
1: Ability to transfer 3 conditions + blind (and chill with traits)
2: AOE that applies bleeds & weakness which is at least semi viable for power & very so for condi. Even if it doesn’t hit it makes them want to move.
3: With trait you get a +25% move speed when using it.
Don’t initiate with phase traversal, initiate with an ability that evades like sword 3 or staff 5. Then you’ll pop all of their traps. Try to dodge the spear and play defensively when they pop their shield of courage. Also you can’t rely on Crystal Hibernation since they have a lot od access to unblockable abilities. Use staff 5 or legend swap if you have invocation to get rid of the condis.
You can also bring retribution which makes it way easier.
DH actually has lost all but one of its unblockable skills.
That 1 is the spear throw on justice active.
Otherwise you advice is spot on.
Make use of your evades and blocks, pay attention to their animations and save your dodges for traps/LB2
After you learn to combat them they are actually quite easy to beat with most classes (thief is only real exception) because
1: The design behind them is so absurdly simple
2: They only really have 1 viable build (Med-traps)
3: Many of their abilities are long CD or have long wind ups
4: Because of the lack of depth they dont really have alternatives to fall back on.
This is exactly as I suspected; nothing that will make anyone rethink how they play the class; yet another affirmation that Guardians ARE the target balance class Anet wants it to be. If that bothers you, seriously find another class now. How many patches do you need before you come to appreciate this point?
If guardian were really “in a good spot” and at the target balance position like you claim they would be nerfing the utter crap out of elementalists, revs engineers & possibly others.
All of them can fill all the same roles a guardian can but do it better with greater flexibility of role with the same gear/PvP amulet
At this point if you actually believe they know what they are doing when it comes to design of the guardian over all let alone in PvP then your completely deluded because it could literally take several hours to list all the design flaws the class has
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^ That
Same reason nobody in their right mind wants a guardian on their team for pvp.
Everything it can do is done better by others.
If our utility’s cool downs weren’t ridiculously high, I think we would be a lot stronger. Consecrations, meditations, shouts, etc. should have a 36 second CD max… Just look at other professions and their access to their needed utilitys
It would help but none of them would compete with meditations in PvP due to the self healing med’s do when combined with their trait monks focus.
That being said if they would do the following for shouts they could easily compete with meditations
1: Remove the CD reduction from pure of voice, in its place have it cause shouts to heal (more or less same scaling as warrior shout heal trait. Leave the condi conversion as is)
2: Reduce the base CD of retreat, stand your ground & hold the line to 20 seconds & save yourselves to 30 seconds _(If need be save yourselves boon up time can be reduced to 7-8 seconds to compensate for lower CD.)
After that shouts would be a great alternative to meditations that would provide AOE healing and self sustain (albeit at a lower self healing then meditations but with a more consistent condition clear with a wider array of boon application)
The other skill types would need similar effects if they were to ever really be considered as well due to the inherent low survivability of the guard without such traits.
The projectile on Sword AA is also very narrow and has a tendency to miss if you or your enemy is on any sort of incline.
http://imgur.com/gallery/M4ZScZa
Off topic (brought to mind from above post) Karl really needs to practice speaking while on camera e.g. Guild Chat. Particularly there was the one GC when discussing the first wave of warrior buffs since HoT (rifle changes) where he struggled to find the Crack Shot trait for a solid two minutes and they had to switch camera focus, probably so somebody could point it out.
Given his performance on GC in general, I’d be willing to attribute it to nerves and flustering which falls on the optimistic end of things. He’s a dev, not a presenter/PR, I know that struggle, whatever. But they chose him to present it. Problem is given the state of Daredevil, Dragonhunter, and Berserker on HoT launch people I know were more than willing to assume the pessimistic end of things that he simply didn’t know what he was doing, or much anything about the classes he was in charge of. Not a good look, that could be clarified by practice in public speaking.But then again, reading the DH blurb on the HoT website even seems confused. It looks to be written to try to justify the design decisions rather than describe a cool new function.
There was a vid quite a while back (forget when) that had Karl talking about guardians.
He kept mentioning other classes skills saying they were guardian skills.
No amount of “Shyness” can explain this, the man obviously has no idea WTF he is doing.
I agree that guardians can use some help. Just no buffing traps or spirit weapons. Passives are not fun.
Ideally they would reduce trap damage by a good 25% but make any boons granted shared with any ally within 600 radius. (Also they could stand to apply bleeding at base in order to make other build options viable)
As for spirit weapons, they are crap no matter what they do at this point.
Either they will be crap or the poor mans MM necro.Instead they should redesign them to be more akin to weapon enchantments that the dervish had in GW1.
I know people are gonna hate for this but, asking to buff boons is absurd. DH traps are the only traps that get boons ON TOP of their effects.
Let’s not forget DH trap has a stun breaker but others don’t.
True enough but guardian really has to bring something to make it worth using the guardian.
Traps previously had high damage & spike potential but Anet nerfed the crap out of them which obviously means they do not want guardians having that potential.
They have also nerfed their control potential several times.
This really only leaves boon support to make traps a viable option, but if they do this note that I said they should do a bit less damage then they do now and be lower in CD.
This way they are more useful for helping you and your group, are less likely to nuke idiots (and thus get nerfed) and bring more consistent damage.
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Even though He based it on a PvP perspective (where is has a history of being a extremely high ranked player) He is right about everything that he said.
Even in WvW and PvE you have to admit that so much of the guardian kit is just crap that nobody would ever want to use for anything that challenges them.
I agree that guardians can use some help. Just no buffing traps or spirit weapons. Passives are not fun.
Ideally they would reduce trap damage by a good 25% but make any boons granted shared with any ally within 600 radius. (Also they could stand to apply bleeding at base in order to make other build options viable)
As for spirit weapons, they are crap no matter what they do at this point.
Either they will be crap or the poor mans MM necro.
Instead they should redesign them to be more akin to weapon enchantments that the dervish had in GW1.
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There is a reason why they changed the ESL rules to make it so you could not stack classes.
That reason is since hot it is far better to stack another ele, engi, rev then bring a guardian.
I would include warrior with guardian but given the amount of passive sustain they recently got combined with their high base health and immunity abilities they are really in a much better place then guardians.
Forget the name of the site but there was a decent number of ESL & high ranked players that ranked classes by how useful they were & how much they wanted them on their team.
Mesmer ranked S+ at top
and Guardian ranked F-Arken’s vid on guardian weapons.
Heard he was going to do one on traits & utilities as well but that one could well be over an hour long and not cover everything wrong.Exactly, other classes are better doing guardian’s roles now. Like rev is better than thief.
Ya rev is better in a lot of ways.
There is 2 things that thief does however that cannot be done by rev.
Those things are
1: Stealth and putting stealth on allies.
2: Disengaging from a fight
That at least keeps thieves with a few things they can do.
There is a reason why they changed the ESL rules to make it so you could not stack classes.
That reason is since hot it is far better to stack another ele, engi, rev then bring a guardian.
I would include warrior with guardian but given the amount of passive sustain they recently got combined with their high base health and immunity abilities they are really in a much better place then guardians.
Forget the name of the site but there was a decent number of ESL & high ranked players that ranked classes by how useful they were & how much they wanted them on their team.
Mesmer ranked S+ at top
and Guardian ranked F-
Arken’s vid on guardian weapons (Some of them, he barely covered shield & staff).
Heard he was going to do one on traits & utilities as well but that one could well be over an hour long and not cover everything wrong.
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As I have said in numerous other threads
if your doing this for fun by all means ago ahead but don’t expect them to use your ideas no matter how well supported by the community, well thought out or how well explained.
The best advice I can give you if your not happy with guardian (who in their right mind is) is roll something else.
Rev, ele & engi are all much more flexible then guardians, have more viable builds & can fulfill the same roles just as well if not better.
Really you can keep coming up with suggestions or the rest of eternity but it won’t make any difference.
Its best to do something more productive & useful with your time.
You can make all the suggestions you want its pretty much a certainty Anet will never use them & pretty much a given at this point that they have no idea WTF they are doing with guardians in PvP.
So if your doing this for fun by all means go ahead but if you expect it to get done I wouldn’t waste my time unless you can abduct & brain wash the entire dev team into doing it.
Nerfs are coming for a number of the problematic guild upgrades like cloaking waters, chilling fog and airship defense.
For cloaking waters, the stealth duration is getting reduced dramatically. We recognize that it’s possible that any amount of stealth is too strong, but changing a number is something we can do quickly and safely. Whereas changing the upgrade to do something entirely different requires significantly more time, both in terms of general development (design/implementation/testing) and also in large part because it would require updated text, which in turn needs to go through our long editing and localization process. As for removing the upgrade entirely, that also isn’t really an option, due to how it’s intertwined with the Scribing and Guild Halls systems.
but changing a number is something we can do quickly and safely. Whereas changing the upgrade to do something entirely different requires significantly more time, both in terms of general development (design/implementation/testing) and also in large part because it would require updated text, which in turn needs to go through our long editing and localization process.
Explains the short shortsightedness of development staff when creating
balancemeta-shift patches.
At this point it should be pretty obvious that Anet doesn’t take advice from anyone.
Even if a skill is early on in development and can be changed slightly or entirely they don’t take advice as show by them not changing traps for DH when it was leaked they would have them.
It should also be quite self evident that they have no idea what they are doing when it comes to the guardian and have no intention of it being decent in PvP as can be seen by the repeated nerfs to guard skills over the years which were only ever useful at low end PvP.
So I’ll say again, if your doing this for fun by all means ago ahead but don’t expect them to use your ideas no matter how well supported by the community, well thought out or how well explained.
The best advice I can give you if your not happy with guardian (who in their right mind is) is roll something else.
Rev, ele & engi are all much more flexible then guardians, have more viable builds & can fulfill the same roles just as well if not better.
http://gw2skills.net/editor/?vZAQJAoYn0MBtNhFmCemC8PhFZCrLwUEWCzdwQYJUbPNFCAA-TZA7AAw+DAA or the alternate power version is likely what you came across.
Up until recently it could use merc, sage or carrion amulets. (power version uses marauder or paladin) Now it just uses the later two.
And despite what people here have said unless you greatly out skill the player using it there are a decent number of specs that simply cannot kill it & die rather easily to it due to how much evasion it has, low CD stun breaks & ways to reset the fight.
My advice is this
1: Roll a scrapper, ele or rev (they are by far the favorites of the design team and the most flexible classes when it comes to how they play and what they can handle)
2: Don’t take PvP seriously. At best its a game of rock paper scissors with certain specs always having the upper hand vs others. (assuming equal skill) At worst its just impossible for anyone especially Anet to balance.
use destroyer amulet, play hybrid build. Destroyer amulet is actually very strong.
No condition damage = no hybrid pressure.
No condition damage = no challenge for Revenant.
Sigh. You guys do realize that DESTROYER has both power and condition damage right. Pls don’t confuse it with demolisher amulet.
Yeah, except it won’t work. Condition damage is DoT, if you don’t have T, you don’t have D. Pretty simple actually. With destroyer you have no defense against physical damage, therefore you won’t survive long enough to do meaningful damage.
Depends how good you are, how good your opponent is & what your opponent is really.
Some of the classes with less mobility & or less AOE are still decently easy to beat as a mesmer assuming your a decent player using sage or carrion.
The high mobility & high AOE classes are just the rock to the mesmers scissors as the mesmer is the scissors to the others paper.
In the end you also have to realize that it is very easy for a mesmer to disengage and roam somewhere else. (something only a few can actually do)
If you find yourself coming up against a build your weak against & your not sure you can outplay the person it may be best to do so. (at least you have the option)
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If they brought thief/ele/guard health levels up they would likely have to lower their ability to survive elsewhere.
And while that may be the easy choice among options it wouldn’t technically be the good one.
(I say this because while ele & thief have a good amount of options for sustain & disengage guard really only has meditations which are still no competition compared to ele/engi/rev sustain, especially in PvP where they far outshine it.)
Frankly I think the better option is to revamp the traits, utility skills & weapon skills that are under par.
Doing so would be quite a bit of work however, especially on the guardian 50% of who’s utility skills, traits & a decent number of weapon skills are absolute crap for PvP.
PS:
Sadly the changes of Anet actually fixing all the broken crap on guardian is next to nothing. It may be higher-much higher on thief & ele however as they seem to have allot less problems to start with and thief has gotten numerous major trait/skill reworks.
As Anet says “guardian is in a good spot”, to which we should all reply bullkitten, if its in a good spot you would nerf ele/engi/rev/mes etc… to give it company.
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The problem is not the amulet, its the classes that gain too much benefit from said amulet.
They need to just make it so certain classes cannot use certain amulets instead of removing them from everyone’s use.
I think the only thing spirit weapons need is to be untargettable/unkillable, and we are good,
they have always been bad because u were too punished for using them,
“Command skills would destroy their spirit weapons prior to the September 9, 2014 update.”
^ this was a really good change, i think SW, were always treated like engi turrets, but they are different, SW are moving "minions"with active abilities not static.
imagine the shield in a wvw zerg fight how many blocks is going to give to you?
or the hammer, stunning/knockback someone inside the zerg to burst them down,in pve if i remember correctly npc’s do not target them, or they take way less damage.
spirit weapons deal a lot of damage too! CONDI and POWER! u can use your boons to boost their damage (staff 4 or fury from meditations)
The bow with 1200 healing power heals for 5040 ( or 2640 with bers. gear) group healing, removes a condi for 30 seconds every 5 sec. (and this is the weakes of the s. weapons)
in fact i used it in pve raid Spirit Vale clearing it, because they take less damage, and are viableo options for damage/support.
but what about pvp, well we have the answer:
“Spirit weapons couldn’t be directly attacked prior to the January 28, 2013 update.”
I don’t know if is still Karl that is working on guardian, but please just revert this ^
make them that they can’t be attacked and i think we can be happy!
Even with that change nobody in their right mind would use them for anything challenging outside of PvE because their would be no sustain benefit to using them.
(Not to mention the lack of stability/protection/stun breaks ext while using them)
As it stands the guardian needs the trait monks focus & at least 1 meditation if they have any hope of surviving a decent fight in PvP or WvW due to the low amount of passive sustain & low base health the guardian has.
And even with meditations and their traits guardian sustain isn’t all that great anymore given how much other classes have & or how easy it is for them to just disengage if the fight goes badly.
Well technically you could include the sword 3rd auto on the list of things that doesn’t cleave.
The attack cone is so narrow that if you or your target are moving or on any sort of incline the attack often just misses.
It can also get reflected very easily in pvp anymore due to all the easy to maintain reflects other classes have.
So while mace changes are a small but very needed change they are just one of dozens upon dozens _(possibly close to 50-70 once you figure in all the traits, weapon skills, utility skills etc..) that need adjustments or flat out remakes.
That would be interesting, problem is that Mace 3 can be single trigereg at range, and targets can trigger easilly mace 3 and evade easilly, altough would be a positive change :\ i guess.
Pretty sure he means the 3rd auto attack which hits a single person and has almost no scaling in how much it heals.
There are tons of changes both little and small that should be made on the guardian.
If your expecting Anet to ever do any of them however your likely smoking something illegal.
They may surprise you once in a great while and do something nice but its generally not something that was actually needed or is just one tiny thing out of a mountain of things that need done.
And don’t let their saying “Guardian is in a good spot” fool you. If guardian were really in a good spot they would nerf ele, engi, rev and a few others into the ground so guards would have company.
Really just make them like weapon enchantments were on the Dervish in GW1.
For those that don’t know they acted like thief Venom’s except instead of just conditions they could have a wide array of effects after being activated for your next X attacks.
For instance
Hammer – Your next attack is a knock down
Sword – Your next X attacks inflict bleeding & cripple
Shield – Create a bubble around you (moves as you do) that blocks ranged attacks (actually blocks them not absorbs)
Bow – Your next X attacks heal in area around you in addition to their normal effects.
After that adjust (Lower in most cases) the cool downs of the “spirits” and change their GM trait so that it heals (smaller amount then monk’s focus) and grants you protection when using a “Spirit Enchantment”
Its because AEGIS counts both as a boon and a block while the signet must hit something to transfer the conditions.
Frankly though I wouldn’t worry about it, guardian is in a horrible place where PvP is concerned & is extremely easy to predict and counter once you know the class.
I have said for several years that they should change them to function like weapon enchantments did on the Dervish in GW1.
For those who don’t know what that did the weapon enchantments acted in a similar fashion to thief venom’s, except instead of doing conditions they had various effects ranging from health steals, AOE healing, some conditions etc..
By doing that they could keep the general feel & look of the spirit weapons, except the effect would be applied to you.
For instance
The sword, could give you access to some condition on attack for X attacks.
The hammer, could cause your next attack to be a knock down
The shield, could create a bubble that stays on you for X seconds which absorbs or blocks ranged attacks
The staff, could cause your next X attacks to do an AOE heal in addition to whatever the attack does.
As I said in another thread
I have said for several years that they should change them to function like weapon enchantments did on the Dervish in GW1.
For those who don’t know what that did the weapon enchantments acted in a similar fashion to thief venom’s, except instead of doing conditions they had various effects ranging from health steals, AOE healing, some conditions etc..
By doing that they could keep the general feel & look of the spirit weapons, except the effect would be applied to you.
For instance
The sword, could give you access to some condition on attack for X attacks.
The hammer, could cause your next attack to be a knock down
The shield, could create a bubble that stays on you for X seconds which absorbs or blocks ranged attacks
The staff, could cause your next X attacks to do an AOE heal in addition to whatever the attack does.
As for AEGIS there are 2 routes they could go down
1: Make AEGIS act like some of the monk spells in GW1 or as power word shield does for priests in WOW.
In that it will absorb/block physical damage up to a set point, conditions would still be applied and not be blocked & after it absorbs a set number it would fall off.
or
2: Simply change AEGIS to block for a set amount of time after being triggered (Say 1/2 – 1 second)
They should also regardless of which route they go make it so any traits regarding AEGIS be triggered when an old AEGIS is overwritten with a new one.
Those alone would have a incredibly good effect on guardian survivability.
Well it would at least be nice if it transformed them before hand so that it isn’t a suicide button in so many pvp situations
The sad thing about pure of voice & soldier/trooper rune is that the primary effect of the shout takes place before the trait & rune do.
This means that in a heavy condition environment save yourselves will suck all the conditions on to you before any of them can be cleansed/converted.
This design flaw like so so many on the guardian has been present since launch, Anet has to know it at this point because many of us have been saying to on the forums for nearly 4 years, yet they never do a little quality of life adjustment that could help tremendously.
DH-trap guardian is OP
As for condi builds; have fiddled with ‘m over the past week. They’re fun!!! but completely unusable against engineers with their massive passive condi removal…
It is rock-paper-scizzors against those sorts of matchups.
Now switched to a heal-sustain build. Burst thieves get burst back while my hp goes up to 100% consistently even against berserk warriors.
Ele and scrapper can do that as well except when they do it they bring more defensive utility for their allies, more boon support & more mobility with either
1: Some reflects in the engineers case but tons of CC
or
2: Tons upon tons of reflects and group healing in the ele’s case.
All while maintaining the same burst potential or bringing pretty good condi pressure.
There is literally nothing in this game that a guardian can do that is not done better by an engi/ele/rev while also bringing better boon support, mobility and either CC or reflects.
The one possible exception is perma protection in PvE on the hammer which is so boring to do that you can watch TV/movies on your second screen while doing it without losing out on much if anything.
(edited by Ragnar the Rock.3174)
I love guardians/dragon hunters. I love my staff on my guardian even though it’s not a useful weapon. I spend most of my time supporting groups in DS with huge empower buffs and symbols to kill mobs faster and progress through the event as quickly as possible.
In my opinion, it really seems to me when I’m on my guardian with her staff and empowering the group and increasing damage with my swiftness symbol and symbol of wrath and traps, the mobs die noticeably faster.
I think my guardian is useful. (My guardian killed a smokescale mob (admit, it wasn’t a veteran smokescale) in Tangled Depths with just her empower buff and symbol of swiftness. That’s way cool.)
All of the things you mentioned are done much much much easier by a warrior, rev, ele or even scrapper.
They also have much greater DPS potential while doing so, as well as more mobility as well as one or more of the following
1: Reflects
2: Condition pressure
3: Better boon support in other areas _(fury, regen etc…)
4: Control effects _(dazes, stuns, knock downs, launches etc..)
And none of it requires them to or their allies to stand still for 3-5 seconds at a time (Something the game is literally designed to punish you for) to get the most of a skill that places a symbol on the ground or requires them to become a statue.
Honestly you could join the numerous other people making suggestions for how to fix this for guardians or you can realize something.
That something is that these problems have existed since launch, people have complained about it since launch and Anet has done nothing.
After that you realize that its just better all around to forget about the guardian even existing & roll a scrapper, ele, or rev which can fill all the same roles better with more flexibility of role at any given moment even in the same gear.
As I said in another thread
You can make all the suggestions you want its pretty much a certainty Anet will never use them & pretty much a given at this point that they have no idea WTF they are doing with guardians in PvP.
If you want to continue doing it for fun by all means go ahead Some of the ideas even sound quite nice but I would not expect any of this to ever get done.
You can make all the suggestions you want its pretty much a certainty Anet will never use them & pretty much a given at this point that they have no idea WTF they are doing with guardians in PvP.
So if your doing this for fun by all means go ahead but if you expect it to get done I wouldn’t waste my time unless you can abduct & brain wash the entire dev team into doing it.
Unless your doing it purely for fun I wouldn’t waste my time.
Anet barely if ever listens to ideas for the guardian on how to fix their numerous problems.
The only time I can think of that they did was with the shield & thats because ppl just stopped using it completely for 3+ years.
Besides at this point it’s pretty obvious they don’t want guardian doing well in PvP, they have said numerous times they don’t like bunkers and proven they don’t want guard doing burst with the nerfs & the last time it had a spec that was anywhere near meta was over a year ago which promptly got nerfed.