The elegant chaining of JI with other skill has now become especially clunky.
While I have enjoyed the fun of teleport jumping over the past 3-4 year – I understand that it would be fixed at some point ( it took 3-4 years longer than I was expecting ) – unfortunately the patch has been executed in a very heavy handed fashion and a staple guardian skill has become increasingly frustrating to use.
Along with the line-of-sight restrictions introduced a few patches ago the skill no longer feels like a teleport at all.
I really hope the artificial limits imposed on it can be tuned with a little more finesse in the future
Yes, so I will echo the general sense of clunkiness observed by others.
We have a stack of new trap skills that require good mobility to use effectively, longbow skills that encourage you to constantly move in and out of melee range, and re-position for maximum effect.
But not the in-fight mobility to achieve these things.
As well as make F2 insta-cast with a more fluid animation, perhaps also make it spammable consuming 1/4 of your energy bar with each jump ( alternatively 1/2 + evade ). That way at least Symbol of Energy will also be a little more interesting/useful. This would allow for some quick repositioning at the expense of some damage mitigation.
The tether should perhaps last a bit longer, considering you can break it by moving out of range ( or as others have mentioned, make it traitable for extra duration )
He’s 100% correct, the skill has no counterplay(outside of being ranged) while doing a significant amount of damage in an area. I love my Guardian and even I can see the bs in it.
Edit: Just to clarify, any instant skill has basically no counterplay to it, just sayin’
While this is true, smite condition is also a counterplay to the excessive condition stacking and CC of many other professions and a crutch for our lack of mobility – our 10k of health doesn’t stand up to much unless our active defenses are unhampered.
I could envisage a change which would allow the damage component to start low and scale with the number of conditions applied to you, rather than being a simple high/low switch – which at least would encourage skillful timing, and perhaps 360 range is a touch high – but we need to be able to punish people who get to close to us.
Edit
Undead Rune’s 7% of toughness to condition conversion, doesn’t convert the toughness gained from Strength in Numbers nor the toughness gained from Stalwart Defender trait.
This is for the same as for Retributive Armor from FAQ#3
Active or conditional bonuses are always applied after percentage boosting traits are calculated
Although my time for play is very limited these days. I’ve been focussing on the bug-list recently, but I do plan an FAQ update soon.
@ Gail – is there a reason for unstickying the guardian issue list in this subforum?
Of all the threads it was probably the most up-to-date and is was useful for preventing constant reposts of the same problems guardians encounter over and over.
I’ve had a discussion with Josh about the merits of continuing it in the past, and he agreed it was a good idea, provided the bugs continue to find their way into the support section aswell after de-duping
For some reason, with +50% burning duration, the burning of Spirit Weapons are 4.25 instead of 4.5 seconds (at least is shown in this way in tooltips).
I couldn’t replicate this – with Sigil of Smouldering ( +20% ), Rune of the Forge ( +20% ) and Radiant Fire ( +10% ) – I get 4.5 seconds of burning on both the sword and the hammer ( in the tooltips and with an extra half a tick of damage as expected ).
Perhaps you were using a different trait/rune/sigil combination that is bugged?
I’ll make a note about the extra burning skill fact though.
Just checked it. Indeed it does not put the skill on cooldown, but still this trait activates the torch skill #4, so you cannot use Zealot’s Flame when this trait activates.
Yup – Radiant Fire actually activates Zealot’s Flame for you – so you either cast Zealot’s Fire to reset the chain or you wait for the 3 second duration to expire before you can cast it again yourself.
As others have mentioned communal defenses had always worked this way.
The reason you’ve not noticed it before was because pre-patch shattered aegis never used to hit more than 1k in a full power build ( and most people at events never ran full power builds ). Most of the time communal just isn’t worth wasting the slot for.
Post patch the damage of shattered was increased a bit too make it actually useful. But it still shouldn’t hit for more than 1.5 to 2k.
So what you see here is not an issue with the guardian skills, but insane power creep from other post – patch changes.
tldr; it’s bugged and won’t work when Indomitable Courage is also enabled. ( Indomitable Courage gives Virtue of Courage and alternative cooldown timer, and Courageous Return is not aware of it.
You should make a compilation of all current guardian bugs in bugs section, here no dev will look at, even if is sticky. I’m thinking to make one with the next patch (which is most likely to still be a lot bugs).
tldr; it’s bugged and won’t work when Indomitable Courage is also enabled. ( Indomitable Courage gives Virtue of Courage and alternative cooldown timer, and Courageous Return is not aware of it.
The blocking component will consume itself and other sources at the same time, like Aegis or Shield of Wrath stacks.
The skill will fail to block any attack from enemies that were not previously aggressive towards the player, meaning that if you preemptively cast the skill, move into aggro range and the mob hits you, it will not block any attack.
Faithful Strike∞
Only hits 1 enemy, despite indicating a target limit of 5, and the other 2 auto-attack chain skills cleaving up to 3 targets each. However it does heal up to 5 allies.
Judge’s Intervention∞
Teleporting towards the end of a fall from any height will allow the guardian to avoid all damage on impact ( provided there are targettable hostiles nearby ) – probably a feature!
The tooltip is ambiguous, should indicate it rallies downed players, not revives, as it does not revive a defeated player.
Can fail to rally a downed player while poisoned with very low hp, user reported it brought him to 70% instead so maybe the poison cut the healing and it did not heal enough to rally?
Purging Flames∞
Due to ground targetting, this skill is very hard to use effectively underwater.
"Retreat!"∞
Cannot be activated whilst jumping or falling, like other shouts can despite having a 0 cast time.
It can still be chained mid-channel with other skills.
"Save Yourselves!"∞
PVP only: Is not listed in the hero panel build editor skills list ( but is still selectable in the utility slot bar ) – probably due to the pvp/pve boon duration skill split.
"Feel My Wrath!"∞
Does not play the voice audio. ( available from the original Tome of Wrath #1 skill )
Sometimes it may start the animation and not offering any protection for the 3 seconds, if you move the spell will not go on cooldown and you can cast it again.
Dodging while under the skill effects will often stop Virtues from being refreshed, and the Elite is forced into cooldown ( although invulnerability is unaffected ).
Other Issues
The boon Quickness continues to affect leap distance ( even after the 7/7 patch ) for skills like Leap of Faith and Mighty Blow. Approximately, the former will have the leap distance reduced from 600 to 460 and the latter from 300 to 240 ( about 20-25% shorter ).
Notes
Auto Attacks chains won’t start by themselves on enemies being hit by symbols, for example symbol of wrath without the player activating the auto attack chain by himself before the symbol is cast, is this intended or bug?, if the enemy is being auto attacked and then the aoe field is laid down the auto attacks will continue normally.
Has a tendency to form itself in the ground below or floating above the guardian in uneven terrain or areas with several layers like the Orr ship.
If the target dies just before the third auto-attack lands, the symbol can be placed twice resulting in double tick damage and twice the amount of protection stacked.
Enemies may exit the ring without stability if timing their jumps or dodges correctly.
Cancels the knockdown animation from enemies affected by banish.
Staff
Orb of Light∞
The orb may rarely get stuck in the terrain or more commonly in WvW fortress doors prompting you to detonate it.
Symbol of Swiftness∞
Can fail to apply swiftness if a player runs through the symbol between ticks ( This is more likely if the player is already under the effect of swiftness ).
Traiting Writ of Persistence for larger symbols can further alleviate this issue.
The third auto-attack chain often can miss structures or be obstructed by the terrain.
Bizarrely, this is a piercing projectile attack which can also be reflected back at the caster.
If the target dies before the third auto-attack lands, Sword Wave can repeat multiple times until it strikes another target or sometimes striking a target more than once.
The teleport component may put you inside the terrain unable to move afterwards, may sometimes fail to teleport to a target that should be able to like on a ledge.
Sometimes players will encounter a rubber-band effect after teleporting where they suddenly snap back to their original location.
I’ve finished my update of the guardian profession forum bug thread for the June 23rd and July 7th patches. I’m copying them here incase some haven’t been reported through the proper channels yet (although most of them should have).
It’s nice to see some of the long-standing bugs squished – keep up the excellent work!
Cheers,
=Tarsi=
Specialisation Traits
Zeal
Zealous Blade∞ Master II
When using the Greatsword skill Binding Blade the player does not receive any healing from either the initial blade strike or the subsequent tick damage. Players also don’t receive healing from the bolts cast from Whirling Wrath.
Right-Hand Strength∞ Adept II
The 15% extra crit while using a 1 hander weapon is not reflected on the character panel. This is most likely due to the fact it only applies to your main-hand weapon, and isn’t a general stats boost.
Renewed Justice∞ Minor Master
Will only trigger if the defeated foe awards XP.
Does not activate immediately when using Greatsword skill Leap of Faith – however if you wait 2 seconds after triggering Virtue of Justice, the bind effect will work as expected
Stalwart Defender∞ Master I
Does not award +180 bonus toughness if you have no other active toughness passive bonuses. ( therefore it will never work in PVP, and only work in WvW/PvE if you have toughness awarded by food or WvW faction bonuses
a) yes it does – although Courageous Return will restore it early if you have it traited ( and you res someone, or get res’d ) – it’s a little buggy though
Pure of Heart is now a 0.5 coefficient, up from a 0.4 coefficient pre-patch (at least in tool-tip). Same base of 645.
Oh nice – I checked the wiki before posting my link, but it still shows 0.4 – I’ll try and find time to test whether it’s actually 0.5 and not another tooltip bug
You can check the healing spreadsheet link in my sig for some rough numbers.
It is unfortunately pre-patch information, but the communal/pure of heart info should still be reasonably accurate.
Fantastic, man, thank you. Question: why do you list a 15 second recharge time for Pure of Heart?
it’s just to simulate 4 aegis procs a minute ( I didn’t want to create a special-case formula just for Pure of Heart )
– to be honest 3 procs a minute is probably more realistic.
You can check the healing spreadsheet link in my sig for some rough numbers.
It is unfortunately pre-patch information, but the communal/pure of heart info should still be reasonably accurate.
I have explored this bug on the buglist already: here
short version: SD will double any bonus attribute stats ( from traits, signets etc ) you have in effect on weapon swap ( this is probably just a display issue ) – the bonuses get recalcuted when you enter combat.
Looking at your build, I’m not sure where your boost to crit chance might come from – possibly WvW bonuses?
This is most noticeable with Force of Will, because you’ll see your health jumping up and down as you keep getting +-300 vitality all the time
but if you notice any other effects, let me know, and I’ll update it.
could you test if it works if you wait 2 or 3 secs between casting VoJ and then doing hammer#2 – like noted here
It might have something to do with movement skills….
I’ve pinpointed the issue here. Judge’s intervention will only properly get its cooldown reduced if you are running monk’s focus AND smiter’s boon. Using any of the other adepts with monk’s focus will not properly reduce the cooldown.
Good find – although my testing reveals that monk’s focus affects the tooltip CD of Judge’s Intervention but it’s Smiter’s Boon that affects the actual cooldown.
So you can also reduce JI’s cooldown without MF – perhaps good news for a hybrid Shout+MI hammer build, but almost certainly an unintentional bug.
Actually I read strength of the fallen wrong. That’s basically the old purity combined with the downed trait. That’s not too awful though naturally medi builds would be better with smiter’s boon.
Well what they’ve done is combine a semi-useful trait ( purity ) with one you would not want to take under any circumstances in pvp – it’s like ordering battle helmets with the horns on the inside
As a long-time litany user for roaming builds I’ve actually moved back to shelter because of all the burn-on-block contributions to the 6-10k/s from condition damage insanity we have at the moment….
And it has no affect on the normal torch 4. What I like to do right now is wait for it to proc then use both instantly.
Yup, I meant that using torch 4 first will fire the ICD, so you won’t get the trait procs – as you say – wait until it triggers and then launch both at once ;-)
