Guild Wars 2

Schakal.6091:

Height they could jump without falling? Isn’t the second part of every jump a fall?

Hah! Thanks for catching my typo. Fixed with the proper procedure of falling from a height too great. =P

“The Kryta Times has reported a huge increase in obituary reports concerning Guardians leaping from cliffs. Apparently this behaviour is deliberate and the Guardians over-estimated the height they could jump without dieing. Developers are still unavailable for comment during this Guardian tragedy.”

Asmodal.6489:

i hate when people only pick certain things from a post as long as yours – but i still do. be ensured that i read it all.

“People can no longer take refuge in my Symbols and my ability to withstand a beating has been nearly cut in half.”

You said you have mace focus equipped as a second set. mace still provides a nearly permamnet symbol that gives reggen and heals. with ability three you are able to put protection on top. throw i Hammer as weapon swap and you have more symbols up then before. i do not see the how your playstyle is broken now.

it always sucks to loose stuff you got acustomed to, but its not like a they broke game or team mechanics.

That said, it does not address the reduction in playstyle that affected Greatsword users. The ability to hard cast the symbol and have a more dynamic playstyle than hammer provided made it a well-received weapon within the Guardian community.

It does “suck to lose(sp) stuff” that I am accustomed to, but in an MMO there should be a serious give and take methodology. In this case, if ANet considers ret too strong they should at least give us full reasoning behind their very broad strokes of change. I personally hate the form of GS now with the increased cooldown rates because it makes GS feel much more passive, akin to the Hammer. I certainly do love spamming auto-attacks… oh wait.

green plum.7514:

Hey Animus,

well, I would disagree with you on 1 GS is very good melee AOE damage, with or without the symbol. Of course, both of us can only speak about gut feelings here.

Anyway, I think that your problem can be easily solved by slightly increasing the sword auto-attack damage. This way, you still get high DPS you want and the symbol remains a tactical choice.

BTW, there is one more reason why old symbol was OP IMHO. It made self-combos way to easy. You could do symbol + whirl + leap for two finishers in a row, and you could do it really often. I don’t think any other profession has access to self-combos such frequent.

Thief with shortbow? Ele with Fire/Earth? The point is that symbols gave a huge utility advantage. We could trait for +damage, +duration, +vulnerability, +healing etc. All of these made the symbols a tactical ability not because of ret but because of the additional upgrades we applied to the ability. The reduction, a drastic reduction really, of the duration of SoW and its uptime nearly eliminates the efficacy of not only the damage but the traited benefits granted to us through our major traits as listed above. Upping the damage of the auto attack I would not care about, having the ability to heal allies consistently, apply vulnerability etc. are things I deeply care about.

Animus, you wrote a series of very well thought out posts. I agree with you on many of those points and want to thank you for representing my voice with your dissent to ANet’s lackluster changes introduced this weekend.

Just to reinforce your views listed above, the removal of a very well balanced build for guardians using Greatswords and symbols strikes very deeply at my continued commitment to this game. By in effect removing the use of SoW (going from 50% uptime to ~16% uptime) it reduces to a great degree the usefulness of Zeal and other symbol major traits for the GS, something many of us have been using for quite a while. And I find it difficult to imagine the symbols were too great in terms of AoE dps etc. If they had a problem with ret, fix ret. This “fix” or adjustment had too many indirect effects on many guardians and is not in any way a progressive or beneficial fix. Additionally, the ability to hard cast the symbol makes the GS SoW much more fun than the hammer Symbol which is auto cast. Worst case scenario, put ret somewhere else and have SoW grant might or something. Sheesh.

Well, now to get a consistent combo field we jump off cliffs to proc the reduced damage from falling trait. So, greatsword users, due to the kitten nerf ANet gave us in regards to SoW, will now fall from such great heights onto our enemies to give us a decent way of making symbols. Obviously. =P

Not only do they mess with our ability to combo in GS but they also reduced the usefulness of any traits that affect symbols or the placement of buffs on allies. Change Retaliation, not the way one of our main weapons is utilized. Or buff all those traits you indirectly nerfed as well. I feel like I’m playing a game not made by ANet but by NCSoft or Blizzard. Had such high hopes….