Guild Wars 2

I’ve been playing my Guardian quite a bit and playing around with weapons, and by far, the most fun is the Two Handed Sword. Binding Blade + Pull, drop Symbol of Wrath, Leap of Faith inside for Retaliation + the damage, and finish off all the pulled enemies with Whirling Wrath. It’s a GREAT synergy that’s both useful and fun to use. By comparison, shield + 1 hand weapons are pretty boring. It’s not so much the damage that’s an issue, I recognize that the Greatsword is a more offensive weapon, it’s the cooldowns, they’re huge. The Shield of Judgment and Shield of Absorption take 30 and 40 seconds respectively to use again, even when specced into the IX talent, 24 and 32 second CDs are still pretty long compared to the Greatsword’s.

My suggestion is basically to modify the skills so that they have shorter cooldowns, but also shorter durations to balance them out. For example, Shield of Absorption could be cut down to around 10-15 seconds CD but only protect for 1/2-1 second and maybe remove the knockback aspect. This would, IMO give more fun options for Guardian melee play instead of 90% of us wearing Greatswords all the time.

I ran CM Explore Mode last night, and at least 2 of the bosses didn’t drop a Bag of Loot for me, but they did for the rest of my party.

I know it’s going to be situational, but what are we supposed to do in fights where bosses tend to one-shot whatever they hit or have some ability that makes melee inadvisable? I ask this because I feel like a lot of the dungeon fights seem to force me to switch to my scepter/shield and do shouts. Ranged characters just blast away while dodging/kiting with their full damage output.

Alternatively, would a fully defensive gearing of toughness/vitality be able to withstand staying in melee for these situations?

So I’ve recently gotten a Guardian to 80 (my second) and while trying to complete the Orr map for the rewards (already got the 100% map completion on my Thief main) I realized that it’s got to be near impossible to finish the temple events due to the number of leveling/completing players. Back when I did them, the map was full and alive, people would gather when an event was happening because everyone wanted to complete the map, now they seem to be contested almost perpetually. Maybe you could have an “overflow” type server for these maps at the very least where several servers would be on one map just so these events are easier to finish and organize, or perhaps have powerful NPCs help the players depending on how many are in the area at the time.

As for the second suggestion, it feels like melee classes have no advantages in dungeons. Sure they’re a BIT tougher, but the ranged classes have more room to work and see and dodge AOE/power shots or kite bosses around. As it is, a fully ranged group can keep kiting or dodging and do high DPS to end the fights while melee characters are relegated to secondary weapons that do very little damage or go down quickly in melee anyway. I know that one of your design philosophies was to do away with the traditional trinity, but it feels like the game favors ranged classes far more.