Guild Wars 2

Seriously, you are so wrong it’s actually sad.

Circles – so what if they are big? You just need to learn the timing, and evade as the aoe is about to pop. You can be in the very middle of the circles, but if you are dodging the same moment spikes are up he can do you squat.
If you run out of endurance you are dodging too often. There are circles that cover most of the room, and there are circles that cover only small areas. If you dodge the first and run out of second all is well.

And the fact that mistake cost you your life (well almost – with some luck there is option of ressing) is the ultimate joy of this fight.

Crystals – they are a bit of RNG indeed, but they aren’t that bad. Some classes can teleport out of them, others can stay in them and still survive while the party frees you.

Resetting – yeah, on this one thing you are right. It’s a bug, it should be fixed.

Waypoint – again stop trying to make awesome and challenging fight easier, by just running back all the time. It’s supposed to be far, so that you actually pay attention to what you are doing instead of mindlessly dying and running back.

You are trying to nerf one of the most fun fights in this game for what reason exactly? So that you can feel better that you cleared it after the nerf? To get tokens? To get achie? Seriously, there are tons of easy dungeons where you can get your tokens, so don’t try to ruin one of the most amazing fights just because you have trouble with it.. Go HotW for easy tokens, and leave Subject Alpha alone :[

I may be looking at it the wrong way, but in my opinion Healing power is viable stat for guardians, if they want to go defensive.

It doesn’t scale well with everything – it barely adds anything to mace 3rd attack heal. It adds aroun ~15% to 4tsh skill from staff, and around 5% to 2nd skill from staff.

But for virtue of resolve, adding around 500 healing power adds 31 per tick. That’s 25% increase on our passive healing (at 80). It also adds around 25% to Hold the Line regen, and 33% to Save yourselves Regen (respectively 300ish and 700ish healing).

I’m not saying it’s an awesome stat. But it’s not as useless as you try to make it right now. Just like toughness isn’t. At least for a guardian. With full Cleric gear, runed with superior soldier, 0/0/30/20/20 build I can tank (as in keep their attention on me, stay in melee most of the time, and survive) everything that doesn’t use conditions. And most of the thing that use conditions as well, since I get rid of them in the blink of an eye with purity, signet of resolve, Absolute Resolve, 6th bonus from Soldier runes and combo field light from symbols .

Perhaps it’s not working well with other classes, but as far as guardian goes – it’s viable.

It’s not that shield is bad per se. It’s just worse than its alternatives in PVE content.

In sPVP the knocback and anti-projectile dome is indeed useful. However in PVE if I’m fighting with lots of ranged mobs I take wall of reflection. And against melee I want to use focus 10 out of 10 times. I mean – sure, shield can give you cone protection to your allies. Or, you can keep the melee mob on yourself, and survive him easily with 4 and 5 of focus, combined with mace, while your party takes no dmg from the mob., because you’re keeping him busy.

If bosses weren’t practically immune to knocback, shield might’ve been a viable alternative in pve. However they are, which means most of the time shield is subpar to focus in defensive scenarios (not useless, just less useful).

Haette.2701:

It may improve a bit, but you have to remember that boss size and the… dynamicness… of their fights are an inverse relationship, and the difference in scale here is off the charts. You’re -never- going to fight one of the elder dragons head-to-head. They’re at least a mile long, and nothing man-portable is going to do a kitten thing to them until some asura invents us up a big ol’ bag of Dr. D. E. Machina’s All-Purpose Phlebotinum Bombs.

The best you can do at that point is a break-the-shield-generators boss with artillery firing in the background, or pull some Gurren Lagann shiz and look stupid as hell because your game is not Gurren Lagann. Even the dragon lieutenants are too big to be a fair fight, so instead they get to stand directly in front of your ultra-particle-mutilator and yell and summon things until it’s charged up. To Anet’s credit, the fights LOOK amazing, but they kinda shot themselves in the foot as far as mechanics go.

I’d say it’s not the problem with using the guns – players can use the guns and have fun with that. Hell, the previous mini-dragons encounters were all about using the guns, and they were pretty intense. It’s about providing some sort of challenge with using the guns. I don’t know – various types of guns – one weakening, one dealing the massive dmg etc. Limited time to use the guns (he could keep destroying them one by one). He could grab the deck from time to time, and everyone would need to fight his claw or, the ship would go down.

There are dozens amazing and epic things you can do with a airship loaded with guns, fighting an aerial battle with unbelievably powerful elder dragon. Clicking 2 for 5 minutes isn’t one of them.

As Ynna said – the biggest problem is that no matter how incredible our support is, we get squat for doing it. I sometimes do get a bag or two, if really big zerg shows up and I’m lucky enough that some of them dies from my symbol of swiftness. But to grind badges for legendary as guardian support is annoying to say the least…

We don’t really need a dungeon finder – what we do need is a global LFG chat. Because as things are now, you have to go back and forth between LA and the zone of the dungeon, not sure were to find your people. If we could advertise for dungeon groups via global channel, the problem would be no more.

In my opinion AC story mode is perfect the way it is. It is harder than CM story mode, but it’s the first dungeon. It’s a rite of passage of sort. The game shows you that, unlike in the open world, in the dungeons you can’t just brute-force your way trough any situation (or at least you can’t do it cheap). You have to play smart, use the dodge, move all the time, you have to learn to use your abilities to their best, and help other players.

You say you play guardian but you posted only 2 weapon combinations. We have more tools then that. We have hammer which is incredible tool for control. We have staff which is our second ward + healing.

I don’t think nerfing AC is such a great idea. Not because I want to be an elitist prick and deny others the fun of dungeons. It’s just that unless you learn in the first dungeon that you have to step up your game when entering the instance, every other dungeon will feel too hard.

And for the record – I first ventured into AC with a pug as a 34 guardian, and while we had our setbacks, we finished it without breaking our armors. And I don’t feel much elitist about it.

Obviously I did. Going into extremes with character creation is pure fun. Tallest Norn, and shortest Asura – that’s the way

I haven’t tried other classes underwater, so perhaps you are right. However if guardian is so weak in underwater combat, then how is that I am completely invincible in Raid on the Capricorn, fight over the ruins? Sure when you bring overhelming numbers even guardian can die there, but so far in battles where both sides have similar numbers of players participating I always came out victorious… Spear melee dmg combined with radiance trait line and meditations for burning makes guardian a really strong underwater fighter. At least that’s my experience.

I also believe that excluding utility skills in your assesment of guardian underwater combat is very wrong. They are there for a reason – in almost no situation can your character shine with only his weapon skills.

I have to agree – I play a defensive guardian, but instead of rolling with shield I have to use Focus. Because it’s just 10x better 90% of time. For most of the ranged trash in dungeons Wall of reflection with healing and occasional sanctuary is good enough. For melee trash the short knocback is barely any setback, and the 3 blocks from Focus outshines it completely.
And for the bosses? Knocback works once out of 5 times, so we can scratch that out. And the only bosses that truely could benefit from some sort of barrier mechanic, fully disregard all types of barrier mechanic

So yeah, the shield is not a good defensive tool, which is indeed a bit absurd. Switching the skills of focus and shield would probably fix the problem. Then we could go with our shiny shields, and still have the desired defense.

Pretty much the only real use I see for shield is sPVP, and there it actually shines. I still won’t take the trait for it, since I spec for meditations.

Miya: I understand that the rewards are very crappy right now (apart from tokens) and that it can be bad towards repair bills if you want to run a lot of dungeons. What I don’t get is why would you continue running through the dungeons ONLY for the tokens/gold. I mean doing 50+ of the same dungeon, same route may be tiring, but we have 23 other dungeon routes. If you swap around them your token income of the one type is getting way lower, but it’s definitely more fun. As far as I see the current change are incentive to people transfixed on burning themselves out in one dungeon route, to go somewhere else.

Or rather – let me rephrase it: I get it, that when you want to get full set from one dungeon (which can be aesthetic, stats, whatever reason) this change is a slap in the face, and the initial idea of the poster to have marks shared among many dungeons would fix that. But still — if you’re forcing yourselves to do something you dislike, just because there is a shiny reward out there isn’t that kinda defeating the purpose of the game?
The reason I mentioned I already have exotics is to point out just that – my incentive is just that: I like these dungeons. As long as I’m not repeating one over and over again I can run a lot of them and enjoy it a lot.

Nice way of shutting out the discussion – saying I’m a fanboy when I disagree. Either way I disagree – to some extent, of course. The bugs are annoying, and they need to be fixed. As far as my experience goes difficult mobs are notthing compared to bugged mobs.

But the thing is – I actually don’t need to run the dungeons – I already crafted full draconic set, which means I do have my exotics. Yet i still find them fun (excluding the bugs). Masochistic perhaps, but fun nevetheless. I do focus more on the dungeons tha I have some marks for, but that doesn’t stop me from going other exploration modes and banking some marks from them for later. Because guess what – I don’t need any of the gear already, so if I’m doing it for aesthetics and the runs themselves I might as well get all sort of different looks.

But then again – I’m a support/control guardian, and that does make playing dungeons far more enjoyable.

Erhmm… It’ really hard to agree with you.
Altruistic Healing – Have you ever tried this one with 20 points in virtues, and Staff/Mace+Shield (or Mace+Focus, both are fine) combo? While it is most powerful in WvW environment, even in dungeon setting it creates a massive heal everytime you use Empower on stuff, which is well – every time it’s off cd. Add to that Symbols from mace/staff, Possible protection from mace, protection from shield or regen from focus and Might/Retaliation from Virtue of Justice and you are supporting the hell out of everyone else while staying top health. And that’s without using any shouts as utility yet. It may be a bit useles if you want to go pure dps I agree, but for a supportive/defensive builds it is a game changer.

Meditation – Improved by Adept and Master traits, with Sword/Scepter build and 30 points in radiance they are powerful. Just take Smite’s Condition and Judge’s Intervention. Both are combination of condition dmg (which in turn boosts our weapon damage) and heal, with some utility. I probably wouldn’t touch it in PVE, but for sPVP this skill is gold.