Guild Wars 2

Hey all, I’ve come back to GW2 after a pretty long hiatus.
After playing for a good while on my warrior, I jumped on my guardian main. Thus began my spiral into despair. I’m slowly becoming convinced that nobody at ArenaNet plays guardian.
I’ma just rattle off a list of my gripes with the profession. Before someone cries, “Well I don’t see you offering any solutions to these problems”, yes I have, many times in the past and I will again. The point is to show how broken I think guardian is.

Your mileage my vary from mine but here’s goes.

- Pigeon-holed into mostly support roles. I LOVE melee support paladin style roles and guardian certainly doesn’t fail at support. Unfortunately, GW2’s design favours support the least, to put it lightly. The guardian’s strongest role is the least needed and often mocked by others.
- Zeal is still really bad. It attempts to promote cross-trait synergy but it tries way too hard to the point that it can’t stand on its own.
- Zeal seems to focus way too much on spirit weapons. Spirit weapons are also still rubbish so there’s a bunch of wasted traits AND skills.
- ANYTHING to do with condition damage is completely wasted on guardians. Until we get reliable sources of damaging conditions outside of burning.
- Ironically, there’s a little too much emphasis on damaging conditions in regard to some zeal and radiance traits. Wasted.
- I don’t see how a primarily front-line melee class still has no cripples and barely any other way of slowing foes. Warriors, heck, ANY other class can easily keep pretty much anyone in the intended range of their weapon for a decent amount of time. Conversely, they will all, always run circles around a guardian, regardless of how many teleports people claim we have.
- Everything that was ever wrong with 1h sword is still there. Sword 2 may as well heal foes. I can talk for pages on my issues with sword. The only other sword skills in the game that don’t have a cripple or leap finisher belong to thief but at least they get immobilise, two teleports and condition removal instead.
- Almost zero combo finishers outside of GS and hammer.
- Only one ranged option, scepter. Which has no projectile finishers, unreliable pseudo-aoe that looks like a symbol but isn’t and an all too brief immobilise.
- No stuns. At all.
- No dazes outside of Tome of Courage.
- Zeal again.
- Shield skills need love, still. Arguably the most iconic guardian weapon but barely used by any.
- Zero passive increased move speed traits/skills.
- Only three sources of swiftness across the entire profession.
- Almost no variety in the types of combo fields.
- Compared to the other professions, I find guardians traits to be far too stand alone. By that, I mean that outside of radiance 1, 3 , VI, Zeal I, the various the symbol traits and EM + AH, it’s hard to make a build where a lot of the traits play off of each other in meaningful ways. Unlike what I’ve seen on other professions.

I think I have more but I’m tired.

There are plenty of things that I think guardian does well but most of those fall into the category of stopping damage (which I love), administering boons (which other classes can do well, too) and healing, which, again, is under-valued in GW2’s game design. I love the idea behind guardian and I want to see the guardian reach the heights of its potential, it’s just that the execution needs a little more work in my opinion. I feel like we’re mostly support in a game that doesn’t need it much and are slow movers in a combat system that favours movement.

Thank you for reading.

I could just be remarkably lucky so far with no crashes, as it’s happened before but removing one of the sticks of RAM appears to have positive results. Funny that memtest didn’t catch it.

I’ve mentioned this in another thread but based on the answer in there, perhaps staff only, really, address the OP so I’m making my own thread about this.

Here’s the problem; at seemingly random times throughout play my game freezes the entire computer. I cannot ALT-TAB or CTRL-ALT-DELETE. All sound stops and the game keeps the last frame perfectly rendered on the screen. The ONLY way I can get back to being able to use the computer is to perform a hard reset. I don’t really want to have to keep doing that for fear of ruining my PC. Event viewer doesn’t record anything but I just checked and I noticed a little log file so I’ll attach that. I did see that it couldn’t write something at some address so after this, I will try taking out my RAM and trying one stick at a time.

Specs:
- Windows 7 64 bit
- 16gb of RAM
- Nvidia GeForce GTX 760
- Intel Core i5-4690 CPU @ 3.50GHz (4 CPU’s), ~3.5GHz
- Some fancy SSD is running the OS, all other data is on the HDD.

Things I have already tried:
- I assembled a brand new PC, the only bits I kept from the previous computer are the HDD and the power supply. I have never had freezing issues in the past.
- It’s obviously a fresh install of Windows.
- The previous HDD/PSU had zero issues running it.
- I’ve tried the msconfig clean start up.
- I’ve updated graphics drivers.
- I’ve rolled back graphics drivers.
- I’ve done Memtest
- I’ve tried running GW2 from the SSD.
- I’ve redownloaded the entire client.
- I’ve deleted the local.dat.
- I’ve ran on lowest graphics.
- I’ve tried running it with all non-essential background processes closed.
- I don’t overclock anything.

Things I haven’t done:
- Throttled the CPU to 99%
- Tried out that RAM idea I had whilst writing this.
- Whatever else someone else suggests on this thread.

There may be something I’ve forgotten. I’ll go try that RAM thing now.
This has been a depressing affair as I’ve recently taken a largeish hiatus from GW2 and now that I’m really back into it, I can’t play it, wah!

Interesting point, it also happened to me once when I was copying GW2 to my SSD. The game wasn’t running at the time but I’ve also had it happen when the game is minimised.
This is getting to be very depressing…

I re-downloaded the game and that hasn’t fixed the issue. I’m thinking it’s something to do with my video card but I’ve got the latest drivers, I’ve tried rolling them back, it’s brand new yet the same problem, every time. Nothing seems to trigger it that I can see, it just happens randomly.

I’m having the same problem, this never happened before, I’ve tried rolling back graphics drivers, it’s already a clean install of Windows 7, I’ve deleted that dat file thing, I’ve tried running on absolute lowest graphics etc etc etc, nothing has fixed this. The ONLY thing I can do to get out of it, once it’s frozen, is to hard reset…
One thing I noticed, is that when it happens, the sound sometimes crackles a little, I sometimes have Spotify running behind GW2 and all sound will stop when it freezes. I’m pretty sure even some of the fans in my machine slow down, for some reason.

My wife’s computer is practically identical (same video card, different manufacturer) and doesn’t get this issue at all…

My specs are:
Processor: Intel® Core™ i5-4690 CPU @ 3.50GHz (4 CPU’s), ~3.5GHz
Memory: 16GB RAM
OS: Windows 7 Home Premium 64 bit
Video Card: Nvidia GeForce GTX 760

It causes me pain every time I swap WoR out for something else.

The only problem is that hammer is remarkably boring.

Having trait lines that work well doesn’t really make up for having broken ones since all trait lines are supposed to work well.

On topic, as Aza said, fix Virtues and Renewed Focus becomes awesome all of a sudden.

I would much prefer it simply hit things in the normal melee arc that most other melee weapons have. If they made Sword Wave hit three times quickly (kinda like how Zealot’s Defense’s four projectiles each hit twice quickly) it would still be great with Virtue of Justice, wouldn’t reduce effectiveness against single targets, wouldn’t be reflectable and would start being more useful in AoE situations and/or PvE.

Before someone mentions the range on it, attack something at range with it. Congratulations! You just hit something for a third of the potential damage you could have done! (assuming it actually hit)

The following is a list of traits I found that can work well, directly, with the greatsword. “Directly” meaning ignoring Virtue of Justice and its related traits, since they’ll work with any weapon.

Zeal: The second and third minor traits, VII.
Radiance: VI.
Valour: XI.
Honour: III, VII, IX, X.
Virtues: The third minor trait, II.

Total: 11.
Most other weapons: Not 11.

By, “trait synergy”, I merely meant that it is an incredibly flexible weapon, trait-wise, compared to others. I just say, “trait synergy” in lieu of saying, “there are various traits that work well with it”. I believe you meant trait synergy as different traits playing off each other, notable example, Radiance 5, 15 and VI, which is great to have etc but I wasn’t referring to that. My apologies for any confusion.

I find the greatsword one of the Guardian’s best available options, it has great trait synergy across pretty much every trait line and is very flexible across different builds, which is a lot more than what I can say for the other weapons. I think it’s a shame that almost any combination of one handed weapons we have don’t quite work as well as our two handed weapons.
We need more combo finishers and/or symbols on one handers if you ask me.
(Don’t even get me started on the sword :P I’ve already made enough threads about that one, haha!)

What I’m about to say has nothing to do with the thread but I’d just like to mention that I’m remarkably glad to see a dev post in the Guardian forums! It makes me feel like things we’re discussing are actually being read.

I dunno, in a group setting, I find Symbol of Wrath very useful. If I need a fire field I just use Purging Flames since I’d be bringing it regardless.

I, too, would like to see how Scarlet was involved in the Fall of Abbadon! Just kidding! I’m with Bron on this one, though.

As long as they keep everything else that is MOBA out of the game and just leave it at minions and towers, then yeah, I’d be on board with it.

Clarifying again, I’m not saying we shouldn’t have access to chill via Glacial Heart but I think Glacial Heart as it stands at the moment is just a bandaid fix for a profession that has almost no access to chill/cripple. What would be truly amazing is if Guardians had cripple available on weapon skills in similar amounts to other professions as well as the option of choosing Glacial Heart for even more slows. That removes the reliance on Glacial Heart being the only slow we have but keeps it as a viable option if someone wants to build that way.

My apologies if I was too ambiguous, to clarify, I’m completely fine with the immobilises we have. I was referring to cripple and/or chill. I know a lot of people want Guardian to have more chills but I think cripple not only fits better, thematically, but because it also doesn’t affect enemy skill cooldowns it could stand to be applied liberally to Guardian weapon skills. You know, like how other professions have it already.

I agree that the trait is a bit lame. I would argue, however, that the trait was only created because Guardian has no reliable snare. Ironically, the trait itself was originally unreliable and the fact that it’s still tied to crits technically means it still is unreliable.

I don’t have a problem with traits offering snares, however, I don’t think that our only snare outside of immobilise should be offered exclusively via a trait, that creates a dependance on the trait.

The core issue is that Guardians just don’t have snares and I think the smoothest way to deal with it is to give them access to something the every other profession in the game already enjoys: cripples on almost every weapon*. I do quite like your suggestion and I’m not denying it would be awesome but I think it would be good in addition to having other snares. Kind of like how Warrior’s have Leg Specialist and still have a million cripples.

I truly don’t understand why a profession that is designed to perform better in melee range has such a limited array of skills to keep foes in melee range when every other profession can throw cripples around everywhere, in a lot of cases, without even trying. The fact that Guardian excels at support does not warrant the lack of snaring options as plenty of other professions can be remarkably good at support and have incredibly easy access to cripple and/or chill.

*Note: I said, “almost”.

I accidentally got to level 80. There I was, sitting there, minding my own business and enjoying the game and bam! I’m 80.
The only other game I can think of where this has happened is Guild Wars: Factions.

Svarty.8019:

What does this mean?

I’m referring to the suggestion of throwing the shield. A wise man once said, “Only a fool throws his weapon away.”

I really like the idea of giving traits an added effect, rather than just percentages. However, I don’t really think Guardians need another pull and, personally, I don’t consider shields a very good projectile in any scenario, ever, regardless of fantasy settings and superheroes and what-not. Just me, though.

That is true, indeed. However, the alternative of having them as conditions would require giving everybody beefed up condition removal to deal with the extra conditions. We already kinda need that as it is.
I rescind my trait suggestion. I’m just wary of power creep, I guess.

I liked how throughout this whole commando april fools thing they actually let you play as one in GW1 is mini-missions as a Terminator parody.

I just love the title of this thread.

Sup Adam of Awesome, I’ve noticed you tend to like heavy support builds, the only real problem with them is that they tend to hit like a wet noodle. I’ve made a build that you might like, it doesn’t have as much boon duration as yours but it uses fury pretty well and stacks up a fair bit of power to do, what I would consider, respectable damage for a massive healing power build. It still keeps a close to 100% uptime on vigour if you’re worried about that.
https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/professions/guardian/Honour-Guard-General-support-tank-build/first#post3212899

I’ve since switched the sigil in the shield to stamina to give it a try, in pve it’s pretty insane how many dodges you can get with it. You almost can’t dodge fast enough.

While I liked those old skills, the last thing I think Guild Wars 2 needs is more conditions! Just writing that kind of gives me a headache. If anything, I’d say we actually need better ways to deal with conditions, especially if something like these ideas come into play.
However, what’s wrong with perhaps making some of these effects traits rather than conditions?

Sometimes my Guardian appears to have the Protector’s Strike shield effect visible on my wife’s screen for entire instances. I’d say it’s a effect bug of a similar nature.

…but but but…. Might of the Protector + Shelter!
I use that trait all the time but it’s pretty much a wasted trait without Shelter, your only other blocking options are mace, focus and aegis and they will usually block far, far fewer times than Shelter.
Until Healing Breeze gets some interesting trait synergy like that, I doubt I’ll switch. Healer’s Retribution doesn’t count! :P Having it as a consecration would make me think about it.

If we’re talking real-life combat, I’d say the person with the shield is at a huge advantage, not to mention, greatswords are actually a long range melee weapon and you’re dead if someone gets close but I digress, this is clearly a fantasy game etc etc.

I’m not thoroughly opposed to the idea of 5 skills for a one hander but to make it worthwhile, they really would have to fix that stat loss problem. I doubt a skill hitting super hard or something is going to make people be ok with, say, 5% less crits etc.
One of the only ways I could think of making it work would be to remove stats from weapons entirely because then you don’t lose them when you equip whatever. The problem with that, though, is that it would totally invalidate all of the weapon crafting professions so we know that will never happen.

Assuming the stat boost is in place, what stats would get boosted? There are times where I’ll have, say, a berserker sword equipped alongside a cleric’s shield. I imagine the only streamlined solution in that case would be to boost the same stats as the weapon you’re holding. I’m sure people would find problems with that in the long run as well, considering how finicky we all are. This is also ignoring the fact they would have to introduce and balance a lot of new skills yet some of our existing skills still need work.

I dunno, I feel like it’s a fair bit of extra work to implement for not a whole lot of gain.
As I said earlier, I’d rather just prefer a couple of selectable skills per weapon slot and then I’ll be happy.

Ironically, jumping was one of the most requested features coming from GW1 into GW2. I think it’s more of a level design thing than a problem with jumping.

@Volkon – It’s essentially a game engine problem there, as soon as a projectile gets reflected, I imagine the either a new copy of the projectile gets created or the current one “changes ownership” and direction so when you’re reflecting projectiles, you’re essentially turning enemy’s projectiles into your own ones which means it’s damage you deal and is why I can use Wall of Reflection to proc projectile finishers to remove conditions from myself and why the reflected projectiles scale with your damage stats and not the enemy’s. I’m pretty sure you knew all that already and what you said does make a whole lot of sense, it would just be a hard thing to work around.

@Ryu – I see what you’re saying and it does suck to be in that situation but you even said in your post that it’s essentially a risk/reward weigh up and you decided that the reward is worth the risk, else you wouldn’t be using the barrage. It sounds like you’re wanting to make retaliation less effective against dps but the reality is, retaliation, along with weakness and protection, are the reliable counters to dps, assuming your dodges are used up. Dps is too effective in this game as it is, if you ask me and I’m completely fine with having various ways of dealing with it, personally.

@Substance E – I think it’s a mechanic, along with confusion, that encourages counter-play. I, personally, don’t use many characters that use confusion but when I encounter it, I would be foolish to simply mash skills with it on me. It’s better that I work out some kind of counter play, in most cases, I pop some kind of condition removal, however, sometimes I just have to cancel attacking, I take less damage that way. Sure, I deal less but I stay alive longer in most cases.
Retaliation can (albeit not always, however that’s the same with conditions) also be dealt with in a similar manner, saving up multi-hit attacks for better timed moments or making sure you’ve got some kind of boon removal if you can is a valid counter play. It makes combat less mindless, require attention and essentially brings it down to the player who plays better wins.

I don’t see damaging someone through boons any less passive than damaging someone through conditions, each require use of skills/traits and each have ways of being dealt with. Conditions are actually worse, really, considering the rate, volume of application and duration far outweigh the available ways to deal with them.

The reason thief gets crappy #3 skills with no offhand is because of the way thief #3 skills work. It’s based on your offhand, or in this case, your lack of offhand. It’s mostly to keep the way it functions consistent across all weapon combinations but also to encourage you to equip an offhand.
In regard to having 5 skills per one hand weapon, I’ve said it ages ago in a similar thread. I just don’t think it’s a good idea for the following reasons:
- As Spoj mentioned, you would lose stats meaning that to compensate, they’d have to make 1 handers magically get more stats if you had one of them equipped but then they lose those stats when you equip an offhand.
- Personally, I think someone with two 1 handers should always be at an advantage to someone who has a single 1 hand. It just makes more sense.
- You could say the loss in stats is the handicap for choosing the 1 hander only skills but why would you choose to have less stats? Surely a better handicap for not having an offhand would be ….. less skills. So, really, exactly how it is now except without the magically fluctuating stats.

I see what you’re saying here and I’m sure a lot of people would like it but I really don’t think it makes a lot of sense. Especially since, if you weren’t suggesting so already, every offhand would then be requested to have a set of 5 skills. It would seem incredibly odd to me seeing Warriors running around with only a shield equipped and still having a reasonable variety of weapon skills available…

I’d rather just have 2 or 3 skills per weapon slot to choose from, making each weapon more customisable to whatever build you’re running.

RyuDragnier.9476:

- snip -

I would hardly say it invalidates any profession. You’re forgetting any condition damage you’re dealing to your target with retaliation, so to say you’re receiving triple damage back is a bit biased.
In fact, in my experience, I would say it doesn’t even counter a few of the weapons you listed.
- Sword Ranger – nope.
- Longbow Ranger – nope, except for barrage and rapid fire, you can cancel rapid fire.
- Shortbow Ranger – nope.
- Sword thief – nope, except for pistol whip, not sure if you can cancel this one.
- Dagger thief – not really, except for death blossom and possibly the first attack in the chain.
- Pistol thief – nope, except for unload which I believe you can also cancel.
- Rifle Engineer – nope.
(At least, not for me, anyway.)

Looking at the above, I would deduce that there are a few skills that get hurt more than others by retaliation but retaliation is supposed to be used as a counter for taking a lot of hits, that’s the intention of it. One or two skills in a weapon set/kit being more susceptible to retaliation does not invalidate it.
Even using the skills that are more susceptible to retaliation in a timely manner, rather than mindlessly using them on cooldown would have much better results. You still have other skills to use, most retaliations usually don’t last very long and there still are plenty of ways around it such as boon removal, waiting a few seconds before using a big multi-hit attack etc or in the worst case scenario, bail!

It doesn’t end these professions, I won’t deny that retaliation can definitely be very powerful in some situations but if retaliation is a real problem for you, take a look at how you’re playing against it, perhaps trying something different will work for you.

Edit: Having it work as per your idea as to returning a percentage of the damage received would be nice and I kinda like it, although it essentially flips the purpose of retaliation upside down. It would probably be more effective against slow, heavy hitters than vice versa.

I don’t necessarily agree with all of the ideas put forward here but I do agree with the whole punishing failure kind of aspect you’re going for. I still quite like a few of the ideas, whether or not I think they’d actually do well is another story, though, I especially like the Protection one and have suggested that myself a little while ago.

You still have to manually activate the skill that converts conditions. The only condition converting that is not manually activated that I can think of is Sigil of Generousity. Well of Power has less control over it but you still have to manually activate it in the first place.

Edit: Whoops! I can’t believe I just thought Sigil of Generousity converted conditions!
In any case, I think this strengthens my point further.

Someone discussed previously the idea that it either be a circular area effect around the Guardian that moves with them or a consecration. I kinda like the consecration idea, personally, gives it some interesting uses via traits.

Just fight Guardians. No need to worry about getting weakness there or cripple….
Yes, I’m bitter.

I’ve tweaked the build a little bit to where I’m comfortable with it.
I’ve replaced the sigil on the mace with a sigil of fire for a nice boost to the damage it puts out.
Since it’s a high healing power build, (I felt strange doing this) I’ve been running Battle Presence over Pure of Voice, since Purging Flames has been buffed and Pure of Voice was fixed, I kinda like the extra green numbers and the condition removal kinda sits in the same place as it was (still room for improvement there).
I’ve switched from 4 runes of rage to 4 runes of the citadel. It works out to be a whole 1.5 seconds less fury and 5% less critical damage but it does have more effective power on paper so I’m running with that for now. Your mileage may vary, change it to however you roll.

Here’s an updated link with it all:
http://gw2buildcraft.com/calculator/guardian/?3.3|9.1k.h17.e.1k.h10.0.0.0|1.1g.h4.0.0.0|1k.71h.1k.71h.1k.74.1k.74.1k.74.1k.74|31l.e15.1k.9a.1k.9a.1k.9a.1k.9a.1a.9a|0.0.u56b.u3ab.a6|69.1|w.z.16.19.1j|e[/url]

If you go over to the boons section and add about 11 stacks of might and 70% fury uptime, it’ll roughly reflect the numbers I usually see. I’m pretty sure it’s also not taking Bloodlust into account. I’ve left Altruistic Healing in the traits section in the link there but I’m currently trying out replacing AH with Mace of Justice, not sure how I feel about it but so far, so good.

I hope someone out there enjoys this build, it seemed to have gone by largely unnoticed before.

If you have any questions or comments, let me know. Once again, thanks for reading!

It’s immersion! Running down stairs is dangerous.

Blinds are technically better than blocks (not taking into account on block traits) because if a foe uses an single aoe attack, for example the Ettin’s overhead smash, it will actually miss everyone in its area of effect, as opposed to, say, one person blocking it and the other four people getting it.

Edit: Of course, blind is also subject to condition removal/conversion so there’s your downside/upside depending on your perspective.

If a skill is usually visible and you interrupting it removes its visibility but not its actual effect, that’s a bug if you ask me, otherwise it’d always be invisible, would it not?

In fact, the visual effect of SoA is kind of incorrect even when fully channeling, it still lasts longer than the visual effect indicates. I’ve always found that kind of annoying because it makes the skill seem lamer than it actually is but also doesn’t give a clear indication of when it ends making it more difficult for me to chain some other projectile control skills or some other decision when I know it’s over.

^ That’s a valid point.

I think people are turning this into more than it is in their minds. I think the original idea, while not initially worded this way, was to give guild member an option to give 5% of their event reward money to automatically go towards the guild bank. At least, I think that would be the best implementation of it, no forcing but with added convenience of not having to think about it.
It’s not actually generating more gold, it’s just consolidating it a little. It would be useful to help guildies get gear and stuff. You could even use it to get like a “Guild Precursor Fund” in action or something. I dunno.

I would actually bring CoP more if the conversions were better. It’s supposed to turn a condition bomb into a boon bomb.

@LoreChief – I’m referring to the passive effect cooldown of those skills, not the actual cooldown upon using them. Knowing when you’re about to get aegis from Virtue of Courage or when you’re about to lose a condition via Signet of Resolve would be really useful.
Regarding summons, when you use a spirit weapon, the skill changes to a chain skill but it would be nice to have some kind of indication somewhere that lets you know how much longer the spirit weapon will be alive for so you will have a better idea of when to maximise using the active skill on the spirit weapon. Granted…. spirit weapons are kind of rubbish anyway… but you know what I’m getting at.

Some runes and sigils have internal cooldowns, too. It would be great to know when my runes of rage are ready to proc again or maybe when a sigil of purity will be ready to remove a condition.
It’s all really useful stuff to know.

I would also like some kind of, at least toggleable, timer UI element like that but I would also want to extend it to include things like actual skills (Signet of Resolve, Virtue of Courage), rune and sigil effect cooldowns and summon durations to it as well (for example, spirit weapons). It would really help with coordinating skills and playing better rather than guessing.

I like the area retaliation! I won’t deny something needs to be done about conditions though…

Some elite skills in GW1 had 2-3 second cooldowns :O
Granted, things work differently now.

For me it’s 2 or less. Assuming 0 means nothing and 10 means everything.
As you said, as long as there’s something fun and possibly even rewarding to do, I’ll do that.
Back in subscription MMO’s, raiding felt more like a job that you paid to do rather than a fun break.

Edit: That being said, I love a good challenge but it doesn’t have to be endgame to be challenging.