Guild Wars 2

I checked the combat log the other day and noticed that my Norn only showed 5 main hits and 7 projectile hits, so I checked other races as well and noticed that humans always get the correct 7 main hits, whereas Charr and Norn always only get 5.

I checked if it was only a combat log bug, but the average damage against a dummy was around 2.8k for the five hit races and 3.5k for humans (Same stats on all characters of course). I did not check the other races, because I have no more character slots left, maybe someone else could check on that.

I also tested out Paladin’s amulet and played with these 2 builds:

One tanky decap build:
http://gw2skills.net/editor/?vVAQNAS5en8cCVDhdDBGdC8DhlGiCrAigRQe4T+n/aYXgAA-TJBFABCcBAuf/BAOIAE8EAAA

And one tanky aggressive build which can burst hard and keep opponents close with constant cripple application (GS 5 and F1 pull both count as knockbacks for the 4s cripple proc):
http://gw2skills.net/editor/?vVAQNAR8en8cCVDhdDBmDB8Dhl4BTuA2/OgX7rhQOoKA0AKAA-TJBFgACXAg69HAeIAEHBAA

The problem is very simple:
Players want to play the new Elite Specialisations → They need a lot of Hero Points → Players try to rush through all Hero Points → Players waste a lot of time getting to the Hero Points, realising that they cannot access them because they need a lot of Mastery Points → Players now have to first grind for Mastery Points

If Elite Specialisations were easy to unlock, players would not feel obligated to prematurely unlock Masteries to get the required Hero Points. They could enjoy the content at a slower pace whilst having fun. Right now players feel forced to overcome a grindfest until their fun begins. They looked forward to playing the content with the new Elite Specialisations, not play almost all new content with their old character, to then finish the bit that is left with the character that they initially intended to play.

This is my own attempt to design an elite specialisation for the Guardian. This is only meant to be a short overview, I did not set values for every single attribute like cast times etc, to keep it as short as possible. Only the most important attributes will be displayed.

Purpose of Elite Specialisations:
Allowing a profession to be played in a way that it could not be played before.

Notable differences to first generation of Elite Specialisations:
Utility category is not an existing category of a different profession, but completely new.

Theme:
Intervention: Helping allies in danger, through offense or defense coupled with mobility bursts.

Additional Notes:

• All abilities that affect allies in a certain radius also affect the Guardian who cast it.
• One of the Major Traits has to be very similar to Monk’s Focus, because Guardian needs high sustain to be viable in PvP. I had to bind that sustain to the new utilities, because stacking Monk’s Focus or Altruistic Healing with another high sustain
  trait would make Guardian too tanky.
• The new Virtues are supposed to be a little stronger than the old ones, because you give up your first Minor Trait for them.
• HP = Healing Power
• ICD = Internal Cooldown
• I had a specific role and a scenario in mind for every skill. I also tried to keep everything as balanced as possible, by comparing my skill designs to existing ones and doing some math.

Utilities:

Category: Intervention

Idea: Two twin utility skills, one part of a twin is supportive, the other one offensive. One twin pair is mobility to reach your ally/foe, the other pair should discourage opponents from staying in a location.

Redeeming Intervention:

• Dash 600 range (evade whilst dashing).
• At the end of the dash give all allies within a 240 radius 4 seconds of Protection, Aegis and Resistance.
• 30s cooldown

Fiery Intervention:

• Dash 600 range (evade whilst dashing).
• At the end of the dash deal moderate damage, chill (3s) and burn (x3) (3s) foes in a 240 radius.
• Gain Quickness for 3 seconds.
• 30s cooldown

Pulsing Radiance:

• An expanding light pulse, pulses 2 times in a row. 240 radius.
• First pulse instant, second one after 2 seconds.
• First pulse: Blind (5s) and slow (3s) foes.
• Second pulse: Knockdown (2s) foes.
• 45 seconds cooldown
• Breaks Stun

Pulsing Wrath:

• An expanding light pulse, pulses 2 times in a row. 240 radius.
• First pulse instant, second one after 2 seconds.
• First pulse: Moderate damage, chill (3s) and burn (x3) (3s) foes, gain Quickness for 3 seconds.
• Second pulse: Very high damage, unblockable
• 45 seconds cooldown
• Breaks Stun

Healing Skill:

Category: Intervention

Idea: Protect yourself against Condition bursts, can make reviving an ally easier.

Purity of Mind:

• Gain Resistance (4s) and heal for 6,500 + 1*HP.
• 30s cooldown

Elite Skill:

Category: Intervention

Idea: Better offense and defense, whilst getting some extra utility to make reviving allies easier.

Avatar of Justice:

• Constant Super Speed
• Revive allies 50% faster.
• Gain Stability (x2) (3s) every 3 seconds.
• Slow (1s) foes around you (360 radius) every second.
• You deal 25% more damage with all sources.
• Take 25% less damage from all sources.
• 15s duration
• 180s cooldown

Traits:

Idea: Minors for mobility, new Virtues offer extra tools to help your allies. The Major Traits always offer one offensive, one defensive and one supportive option in every tier. I tried to have at least one universally useful Trait in every tier, so that you always have at least one choice that works with most builds.

Minor Traits:

Adept:

Blade of Justice:

• You can equip a sword in your offhand now. Your Virtues change to:

Charge of Justice:

• Passive: Burn foes every few attacks.
  Active:
• Gain Super Speed (3s), your next attack burns your foe (x1) (6s).
• 20s cooldown

Pulse of Resolve:

• Passive: Regenerates health.
  Active:
• An expanding light pulse, cleanses 2 Conditions from allies and heals them for 1,625 + 0.75*HP.
• 240 radius
• 40s cooldown

Safeguard of Courage:

• Passive: Gain Aegis every few seconds.
  Active:
• Protect yourself with surrounding light, take 50% less damage from all sources for 4 seconds.
• Grant Aegis to nearby allies.
• 60s cooldown

Master:

Zealous Duty:

• Passive: +25% movespeed
• Whenever there is a downed ally within a 1200 radius, you gain Super Speed (5s) (30s ICD).

Grandmaster:

Unstoppable Determination:

• When you drop below 50% health, gain Super Speed (3s), break stuns, gain Stability (x3) (3s)
  and remove Cripple, Chill and Immobilize (30 seconds ICD).

Major Traits:

Adept:
1: Precautious Preparation:

• Evading an attack grants Aegis (5s) (15s ICD).

2: Valiant Force:

• When under the effect of Super Speed, gain Might (x1) (8s) (1s Intervall).

3: Unshakable Mercy:

• When you begin reviving an ally you gain Stability (x3) (5s) (10s ICD). Revive allies 10% faster.

Master:
1: Fortified Safeguard:

• Safeguard of Courage has 20% reduced recharge duration and now makes you invulnerable instead.

2: Break the Ice:

• When you critically hit a foe, chill (3s) them and gain Fury (8s) (15s ICD).

3: Benevolent Devotion:

• Granting Boons to allies heals them (1000 + 1*HP) and cleanses a Condition. (15s ICD, individual per ally).

Grandmaster:
1: Rejuvenation of the Just:

• Reduce the recharge duration for all Intervention skills by 20%. Intervention Utility Skills (only Utility Skills!) heal you for 2500 + 0.5*HP.

2: Shattering Purification:

• When you hit a foe below 50% health, remove all their boons and knock them down (2s) (20s ICD).

3: Aura of Sanctification:

• Allies standing next to you take 10% less damage from all sources and regenerate health (300/s) (240 radius). Does not include yourself.

Sword offhand skills:

Idea: Mobility and a control ability, which can be used defensively or offensively.

#4: Valiant Charge:

• Gain Super Speed (3s), your next attack applies Chill (3s), Weakness (5s) and is unblockable.
• 25s cooldown

#5: Sword of Salvation:

• Raise your sword into the air, emitting a light pulse that launches nearby foes (240 radius)
• Moderate damage
• 40s cooldown

Edit 1: Toned down the dashes and Benevolent Devotion a little bit.

What about Hunter’s Fortification? The condition cleanse part did not work at all, did that get fixed? And about Fragments of Faith functionality, your character would only pick up the Aegis fragments, if you walk over it, when you keep standing on a fragment and lose an Aegis, you would not pick up the fragment, which made it very clunky to gather the fragments, sometimes you had to walk out of a fragment and walk over it again to pick it up, which costs a lot of time.

My opinion of the DH in BWE3:

Virtues:

• Spear of Justice: Effect is a little weak, only a few short burn stacks, could need slight improval.
• Wings of Resolve: Great skill overall, does not need a change.
• Shield of Courage: Great skill overall, does not need a change.

Traits:

• Virtuous Action: Allows to have stronger Virtues than the base ones, so it is worth it.
• Piercing Light: The daze part feels a little weak, but overall solid.
• Dulled Senses: Vulnerability should be 2-3 stacks. It needs to have a higher impact, because knockbacks/cripples are a rather rare occurrence. In my testing it also worked with launches like Banish, not sure if that is intended.
• Soaring Devastation: Great
• Defender’s Dogma: Very very weak, blocks are not always directly followed by an attack. On average you might get 2-3 more Justice passive procs every 20 seconds.
• Hunter’s Determination: Very good Trait, but the trap was bugged during the beta. Bug will be explained below.
• Zealot’s Aggression: Very strong Trait, but forces you to never activate Spear of Justice.
• Bulwark: Pretty underwhelming, a minor bonus for a skill on a long cooldown, should have aditional benefits.
• Pure of Sight: Strong Trait, but only effectively works with Longbow and Scepter, which limits build options.
• Hunter’s Fortification: Would be very strong, but the Condition cleanse part was bugged and did not work at all.
• Heavy Light: A little bit underwhelming for a Grandmaster Trait, if Pure of Sight would be merged into it, it would be a solid choice.
• Big Game Hunter: Underwhelming, a short damage increase on an ability that can miss is not worth a Grandmaster Trait. It also is antagonistic to Defender’s Dogma and Zealot’s Aggression.

Longbow:

1. Solid overall.
2. Very solid, root is now a perfectly reasonable tradeoff for such a hard hitting ability on only 4 seconds cooldown.
3. Hard to destroy projectiles with it, quite underwhelming if you do not destroy a projectile.
4. Solid overall.
5. Solid overall.

Traps:

• Purification: A healing skill that is a trap is inherently a bad idea, because your heal skill is a very important part of your survival, so you never want it to be reactive, but proactive. The healing value this trap offers on a 30 second cooldown is amazing though.
• Fragments of Faight: Very good trap, has strong synergies with Aegis Traits. It was bugged so that the damage part of the trap would trigger three times. I crit a golem dummy for 3.7k three times, which definitely did not seem like intended behaviour.
• Light’s Judgement: Very weak, 45 seconds cooldown for a little bit of Reveal and Vulnerability is just not worth it. The opponent can immediately walk out of it and be almost not impacted by the trap at all.
• Test of Faith: Solid area denial tool, can push opponents through it for strong bursts.
• Procession of Blades: Offers nothing but a little bit of damage, which can be partially mitigated by simply walking out of the trap. Very weak.
• Dragon’s Maw: Felt a little bit underwhelming for an elite skill, but it is overall still quite solid.

Additional Notes:

• Currently the Guardian is forced to run heavy sustain, because of the inherent lack of mobility, so pretty much every build is forced to run Altruistic Healing or Monk’s Focus, which heavily impacts the viability of everything that does not work with those Traits. If you compare builds without Healing Power, one running Monk’s Focus and the other one not, you can do some math. Your base sustain featuring your healing skill and Resolve passive add up to around 235 health per second (using Shelter). Monk’s Focus adds around 200 health per second, if you run a full Meditation build, which almost doubles your health regeneration.

(Math: Add up Meditation cooldowns: 16+36+48+72 = 172 => Average Meditation cooldown: 172/4 = 43. Four Meditation skills. => You can use a Meditation roughly every 10 seconds, which heals for roughly 2000. => Around 200 health per second.)

If the sustain issue is not fixed, I do not see anyone using traps, or any other skill that does not work with Monk’s Focus or Altruistic Healing. If you look at other Professions, which do not have that problem, you almost always see Professions which have great sustain from their healing skill alone (Ranger, Warrior).

The only problem I have with Virtues is, that the active effect is incredibly weak if untraited and incredibly strong if traited. Without the Virtues traitline it does not feel like activating them has any meaningful impact. Arenanet cannot simply lower the base cooldown of Virtues, because if they make untraited Virtues balanced, the traited ones become overpowered.

Dragonhunter has a lot stronger base Virtues with lower cooldowns, but you give up instant casts and your first minor trait in the DH traitline.

To be honest, a lot of potential for Dragonhunter gets destroyed by cast times. All new Virtues have a cast time, which slows down the class a lot and also prohibits the use of them whilst channeling Renewed Focus.

The traps have a one second cast time, which is huge, quite often you just get bursted whilst trying to lay traps.

What the traps and the virtues do is actually overall quite solid, but you have to factor in not only what a class can do, but also what it can do in a certain amount of time. If it takes 5+ seconds to go through your virtues and traps, it is just bad. Guardian works fine because you can go through your skill rotation a lot quicker and therefore have a lot more pressure.

Another thing that gets completely destroyed by Virtues having a casttime is the active counter play you can normally get from them. Instant aegis and instant blind on Virtue of Justice allows you to prevent key attacks with good timing, instant condi cleanse on Virtue of Resolve helps you survive against condi bursts and the list goes on. So many things that the virtues currently do require them to be instants, which severely weakens the Dragonhunter’s Virtues.

Some traits felt mediocre and too specific to be useful overall. A mandatory 10% damage increase only for ranged weapon really limits your options.

The longbow felt way too slow and clunky.
- #1 does not deal enough damage and is easy to avoid
- #2 deals very solid damage but roots you in place quite long, which can get you killed
- #3 it should either offer more utility, by destroying projectiles better, or it should deal more damage
- #4 reaches destination too slowly, damage is a tiny bit too low
- #5 looks fine, maybe lower the channel time a tiny bit

I would really like a trait in Radiance that makes your VoJ active remove 3 boons on the next hit (only for the guardian). Some effects are pretty bad if they are applied randomly, and boon removal is one of them. Since the power level of different boons varies a lot, you would only want to remove key boons, the old trait was bad because of that.

I think retaliation fails to be balanced, because of its inconsistency. There is a best case scenario, when fast hits are involved, and a worst case scenario, when slow hits are involved. Arenanet has to balance the boon around the best case, in order for it not to be broken.

In my opinion the easiest change would be to give retaliation a 1 second internal cooldown per individual target and increase retaliation damage to be somewhat impactful, which would be the case at around 600-700 damage, I feel.

Right now retaliation can have a high uptime on some classes like Guardian, but it feels almost negligible. I think it would feel better with lower uptime, that needs to be specifically timed, but high impact, which would encourage actively timed usage instead of passive retaliation spamming.

Shattered Aegis crits for 2.5k-3k against glass cannons and you can proc up to 5 of them at the same time with Virtue of Courage.

Seems just worse than running Zeal over Honor, from Honor you get 300 Vitality and Vigor, everything else is almost completely irrelevant. From Zeal you get several damage modifiers and Shattered Aegis for insane potential AoE burst.

I think the easiest way to win against a Thief is to practice hitting them hard during the small timeframe inbetween their dodges, since they have almost infinte dodgerolls as it sometimes seems. It should not be hard to hit with Smite Condition, which crits them for 1/3 of their max health if they are zerker.

Ragnarox.9601:

Actually it’s 10%. normal dmg without trait is 500 crit 980 with trait its 550 and 1070…pretty normal to me. Tested on heavy golem dummy.

You are actually correct, dmg modifier on burning which was triggered by symbols messed with my numbers.

Arenanet finally did it, they fixed Symbolic Avenger, now they should change it to +20% to make it actually useful.

I noticed, that the virtues had a really low cooldown, they were at around 15/30/45 which is half of the normal cooldown.

In sPvP there is no other working zerker build, but medi guard. In WvW you have more freedom, though, because in WvW Save Yourselves and dodge heal are not nerfed, so you can get enough sustain as a shout guardian. In general it is hard to build an offensive guardian, because the defensive traitlines are so much stronger than the offensive ones.