Guild Wars 2

Things of note for Guardian healers from the Cutthroat Politics update.

• Monk’s Focus: This trait now scales 40% with healing power, up from 10%.

Nice.

• Merciful Intervention: This skill’s recharge has been lowered from 80 seconds to 50 seconds. Base healing for this skill has been increased by 48%. Scaling with healing power has been increased to 60% effectiveness, up from 20%.

Holy crap!

• Writ of the Merciful: Fixed a bug so that the healing area provided from this trait will correctly scale its radius with the Writ of Exaltation trait.

Finally!

These are very meaningful fixes for Guardians looking to create healing builds!

Thank you Arenanet!

JoeyB.3509:

I’m actually curious to see how well a pure healing Guard would do in WvW for zerg battles using a traited Tome of Courage. Would it be worth it?

Most definitely it would. It only fully heals up to 5 allies but if you were standing next to the allies doing the most damage that would be amazing. Imagine if there were 3 Guardians running this build. That’s 15 players that would be fully healed from a near Downed state.

TOC skill Pacifism (#4) would probably be good too. The 3 seconds of daze could give you the time you need to get off a Light of Deliverance (#5) heal or free target whacking for your allies.

TOC skill Heal Area (#1) would probably be the bread and butter skill. If you have the Elite Focus trait then TOC lasts for 30 seconds instead of 20. 30 seconds of Heal Area at specific times like when storming the keep while players are being inundated with arrows from arrow carts could be amazingly effective given Heal Area’s zero CD and very fast 3/4 casting time. Now multiply this by 3 or 4 Guardians with this build.

A healing build would be really helpful but remember these are human players; many of whom are WOW PVP alumni. The moment they see what your doing you will become the primary target. The good thing though is the radius for Guardian’s heals is enormous. With Tome of Courage the radius is around 75% the radius for arrow carts!

But all of this is academic because I haven’t actually run this build through WvW. Feel free to try it out and report back.

1. Given that I have 19,615 health I’m going to drop Valor > XI. Altruistic Healing. This build has a lot of health. If I die it’s probably due to A) bad luck or B) I was one shot (which Altruistic Healing probably wouldn’t heal through) or C) my group mates aren’t doing their job and pounding the mob to get their attention.

So in place of Altruistic Healing I have these option:

Honor > VII. Writ of Persistence
Honor > XII. Battle Presence

I’m trying to decide which is better?

With Writ of Persistence I get this:
- Increases symbol duration by 50%, rounded down; for example, Symbol of Protection will pulse 4 times instead of 3.

With Battle Presence I get these:
- Applies the Virtue of Resolve passive effect for 3 seconds, reapplying itself every 3 seconds.
- Has a radius of 600.
- Is affected by Absolute Resolution.
- Will remain in effect while Virtue of Resolve is on cooldown.
- No self-benefit

I’m leaning towards Battle Presence, but what are your thoughts?

2. I like the suggestion to change from “Stand Your Ground” to “Hold the Line!”. I initially chose SYG for the damage reflection. I thought this would be awesome. Instead what I found (now that I’m in a support role) is that most mobs don’t have a priority mechanic. Most of the time I am simply ignore even if I’m doing mass heals. Basically it’s like mobs have ADD. So “Hold the Line!” is it. Thank you. :)

3. I’m not going to care much about DPS. This build is sacrificing DPS in favor of keeping other’s alive to let them do DPS. I treat this like WOW. In WOW as long as the healer kept the tank alive the tank can then hold aggro thereby allowing the DPS to do their job. The holy trinity does not exist in GW2 but the principle is still the same. In this case I’m keeping the players alive so that they can tank and DPS.

4. That build looks good. Keep me updated with its progress.

5. In my DPS build (link in the first post) I found Signet Mastery works well if combined with Signet of Resolve and Renewed Focus. All three are a lot of healing. I would not use Signet Mastery in a healing build. Like Altruistic Healing it benefits self. My healing build has a lot of health. I’m more concerned with healing others and that’s why I go with Healing Breeze. With my build Healing Breeze heals for 600 health per second in an AOE field. If everyone is stacks everyone is healed for Healing Breeze’s duration. This makes it a very useful skill to have for any Guardian healer.

6. After telling the group I was in numerous times to stack on one mob or target Sanctuary became useful. It became VERY evident in path 3 of Ascalonian Catacombs for Hall of Champions’ burrows. The amount of adds was getting intense but I quickly told the group to stack on each mound. From there I triggered Sanctuary and dozens of mob bounced off the shield. Basically the key to Sanctuary’s success is to get the group to stack.

Hi! I’ve only been healing for a couple weeks, but I’ll give you my two cents on your build drawing from my limited experience. You’re correct that Writs of Exaltation and Merciful are pretty integral to Guardian healing with a mace, but I’m also a very big fan of going 30 points into honor for Writ of Persistence. We really have most of our heals from symbols. With regards to Altruistic Healing, I’ve found that I’m usually not the one most in need of healing, as I a) have my shield and b) spend the most time within my symbols. I’ll respec to AH tomorrow night to see how it feels out of curiosity. I would also replace Stand Your Ground with Hold the Line as you get healing out of it, unless you’re doing a fight with a lot of knock-downs you need to avoid.

The one issue that I’ve had is that in fights that involve a lot of mobility or less healing, more dps, I’ve felt pretty useless. I just made a new build last night that I’ve only tested once, but it attempts to leverage a bit more dps using a hammer / staff instead of the standard mace&shield / staff on fights where I need the dps boost (the last boss of AC p2 comes to mind). I’ve linked it below, very open to thoughts and critiques. As for gear, I’m still working on it but going to run 3 monks 3 water.

http://gw2skills.net/editor/?fUAQNApeWlcgyDnFyMEmIFRuArCAsmR8mH2DN6xPC

I’m planning to switch between Blind Exposure and Signet Mastery depending on whether the fight calls for more dps or self-heals (I would use Signet of Resolve instead of Healing Breeze when using Signet Mastery). My first skill slot is fight-dependent. Sanctuary is pretty useless if everyone’s constantly moving, so I’d replace it with Wall of Reflection for a projectile fight or Merciful Intervention for anything else.

Who knows, the points in Zeal may not be worth the survivability loss from no points in Valor.

My PVE DPS build

PVE HEALING BUILD
Ignore the numbers; they’re blatantly wrong. This is simply a visual summary of this build.

TRAITS

30 Valor

• I. Meditation Mastery
• VII. Mace of Justice
• XI. Altruistic Healing

20 Honor

• III. Writ of Exaltation
• X. Writ of the Merciful

20. Virtues:

• VI. Master of Consecrations
• VII. Elite Focus

SKILLS

Healing Breeze
Stand Your Ground
Merciful Intervention
Sanctuary
Tome of Courage

ARMOR

Shaman’s Banded Helm of the Water (Superior Rune of the Water)
Shaman’s Banded Pauldrons of the Water (Superior Rune of the Water)
Shaman’s Banded Coat of the Water (Superior Rune of the Water)
Shaman’s Banded Gauntlets of the Water (Superior Rune of the Water)
Shaman’s Banded Legs of the Water (Superior Rune of the Water)
Shaman’s Banded Greaves of the Water (Superior Rune of the Water)

WEAPONS

Main:
Shaman’s Norn Mace of Restoration (Superior Sigil of Restoration)
Cleric’s Shield of Restoration (Superior Sigil of Restoration)

Secondary:
Carrion Legionnaire Staff of Restoration (Superior Sigil of Restoration)

TRINKETS

Risen Spineguard (Exquisite Chrysocola Jewel)
Orrian Artifact Shards (Exquisite Sapphine Jewel)
Orrian Artifact Shards (Exquisite Sapphine Jewel)
Dissonance Amplifier (Exquisite Sapphine Jewel)
Magi’s Ring of the Cleric (Exquisite Sapphine Jewel)
Magi’s Ring of the Cleric (Exquisite Sapphine Jewel)

BASE STATS (No buffs, white only stats)

Build stats are bold

Power 1,006
Attack 1,990
Precision 1,126
Critical Change 14%
Toughness 1,291
Armor 2,362
Vitality 1,797
Health 19,615
Condition Damage 349
Condition Duration 0%
Boon Duration 35%
Healing Power 1,109
Critical Damage 30%
Guardian 20%
Agony Resistance 0
Magic Find 12%

SUMMARY

I have played a DPS Guardian since launch. People have said Guardian healing builds are useless. I wanted to see if this was true. After a day of trial and error I came up with the above build.

First this build is designed not to be expensive. My primary build is DPS and I don’t do healing often so I didn’t want to spend 15 gold on exotic armor and weapons. Instead I went for rare gear with exotic runes, sigils and jewels. Total cost: ~5G

I did all three paths of Crucible of Eternity and Citadel of Flame. I ran COE with a Chinese farming group. COE is very healing friendly. On the other hand P1 and P2 of COF was designed to be heavy DPS. COF P3 was where the healing build really helped especially at the part where a base in establish and your group needs to defend it against 7 waves of mobs. Through it all I was able to heals for large amounts. The Tome of Courage skill Light of Deliverance is really amazing. several members on the verge of being Downed were brought to full health. All in all this build did a very good job so much so that even the Chinese farming group liked it! They may take a Healing spec’ed Guardian on their next dungeon clear.

What helps most is if players stack on a single mob or the primary target. If players are spread out to far they won’t be able to benefit from heals unless I’m using Tome of Courage.

If this build helps please let me know.

I think it possible you may be mistaken, this is not a “casuals” game either.

I’m about as casual as they come, often playing for a distraction when really quite ill (which is why I tend to keep myself to myself, it’s not fair to other gamers to expect them to accommodate) and expect pretty much nothing from this game. I don’t care about playing dress up, really just want to slowly plunk away in my own time and achieve something of some meaning, however minor it may be. Skins etc are totally meaningless frippery, and most gem items are QoL convenience at best – are these aspirations that people have, that keep them playing? Perhaps. Does it discriminate between casual or hardcore? Only in terms of gold earning speed potential if you choose to not break out real cash.

The time will inevitably come where fuzzy hats and mini pets are the brick wall that will be struck for you, and for me. There is nowhere much to go from this point. I know I lack whatever is required to get top of the range gear – I don’t need it, and the game will never just give it to me, whatever you may think of me as a “casual”.

So why do we (and many others) play? Habit? Boredom? The motivation/reward cycle that is really no more sophisticated than pigeon pecks button, pigeon gets peanut? I have my reasons. Do you have yours? And if they’re not good enough then don’t stay (amuses me that players will respond to comments like this with “OMG quit”, as if they think it somehow benefits the game to have players leaving).

But don’t think this game offers casual players Tyria, it really doesn’t. We are not the enemy. The enemy is a dearth of truly meaningful content, which can be played at whatever speed/proficiency the player can bring to the table. If something new should come along, you may well do it quickly and easily – or at a higher and eventually more rewarding level – while I dawdle at the back. Does that make me, as a casual, the problem? Is it not the case that hardcore players will inevitably munch content far faster than the gamerunners can ever hope to deliver it?

I think that what you are talking about has nothing to do with hardcore v casual, and everything to do with the lifecycle of the game and whatever content brick wall you have hit. To that end you must decide if it is worthwhile your even being here. As a casual, at a similar (if less proficient) position, I’m thinking much the same. What is there here to actually do. And if the answer is – nothing much (I’m thinking this after 15 mins into new patch and messing around with aspects I don’t care about) then there really is only one option left and it is neither my fault nor yours at either end of the casual/hardcore spectrum.

The issue is one of content: Meaningless fluff is not content. Fuzzy hats is not content. Neverending collections of junk for some mini pet reward is not content. But if people are willing to spend their time doing this, it’s up to them. But it’s neither casual nor hardcore.

I am always pleased to see newly-added faces to our character creation selection. However, this update’s round of new faces has shown some troubling trends.

First and foremost, the re-use of old faces, with minor edits. While there is nothing wrong with this being done sometimes, arenanet needs to be cautious. In the past, they have cut corners with regards to character appearance. Arenanet needs to keep in mind that, while some re-used faces are fine and even desirable, this is no excuse for them to stop developing entirely new ones.

Secondly, the issue with the asuran faces. Of all the races, asura are the most androgynous. The other races have gender differences in both body AND face. Asura, on the other hand, only have facial differences—their bodies are all the same. An asura’s face is its most important trait—far more so then the other races. As such, it is very, very important to design asuran faces without cutting corners.
The fact that the new asura faces for males and females are the same isn’t okay. It’s not about gender. In fact, I like the idea of having faces that are the same across both sexes. It allows characters to not be defined by their gender. However, these faces were not added to promote gender equality. They were added because of sheer laziness. And that’s what isn’t okay—the laziness. The fact that corners are cut—and on a race where facial distinction is so vital.

And lastly, the fact that new faces were added in the first place, when the old faces are still so glitchy. Take the charr, for example. On some of the faces which were added previously, the teeth clip horribly into the face, headgear does not fit, and lip movement is glitchy. On one of the male faces, the teeth are so terrible it’s just about unusable. Before adding new faces, with the same glitch problems, arenanet needs to fix the last ones they added.

TooBz.3065:

I think the official response is to buy an expensive extractor. I think it would be much better to allow all gear to be salvaged. Even if it didn’t give anything back except for the rune / sigil.

I don’t think that’s the official response, because, as far as I’ve been able to find, ANet hasn’t expressed an opinion on the topic since 15 April. Based on the price of the upgrade extractor, it seems more likely that that gem-store item’s purpose is for removing infusions from ascended gear — +10 agony infusions are worth over 10g, but few other upgrades will ever cost that much.

I speculate that ANet simply didn’t consider how many players would want to salvage upgrades from karma/wvw armor. My guess is that they are currently brainstorming about a number of different wardrobe related issues, trying to figure out a direction to proceed, and then they’ll let us know. I expect them to respond with some variation of “we’re aware of the issue and…” one of the following:

• We have no plans to adjust this — you’ll have to buy new upgrades.
• We plan to add runes/sigils to the wardrobe, but the implementation is complicated and we have no ETA.
• We plan to allow people to salvage and forge all gear in the future. Design for this is easy, but a bug-free implementation will take time.

Yeah I have to agree. I usually roll my eyes when I see posts saying “zomg anet devs hate this and this” but this is actually quite insulting, and has left me feeling that anet really are indifferent to asura

I mean, asura hairstyles in the kits have been amazing, really, I have loved all the new additions. And the faces on their own are quite nice (not to my taste), but I don’t think i’m alone in thinking that this is lazy and uninspired.

There are already many asura players calling for minor differences to be added in male/female clothing but now we also have to share faces as well…

Why anet? :/ Argh.

I was thinking, since the devs are reluctant to release any kind of meaningful PvE content, what ever the reason, maybe it would be sweet if the game was open for content modding like games such as Skyrim for example.

- The loot is irrelevant anyway
- The community is much more passionate about the game than who ever is developing it
- The framework is already in place with Fractals of the Mists
- It would make people stay on the game at virtually no costs for the studio and much more enjoyment for the players

Thoughts?

I think all potential skins should be shown in advance and voted on. We simply can’t trust them to make wise decisions in regards to skins.

can we have a competition? let players design some skins or outfits, and everybody can vote for any body, winner’s work will be add into game

zacchary? you are my new hero. <3 ya man!

i posted in the other post on this topic, and i’ll post again — anytime someone gets their behiney handed to them in pvp, they decide that, rather than figure out how to counter the issue, the winning profession just needs a nerf.

here’s one for ya — i have two thieves. yes, i know, makes no sense to any of you, but i LOVE learning professions from the ground up, and i build my own builds. anyway. the first thief i built, i incorporated no toughness, no stealth. she’s designed as a highly mobile attack machine dishing out super-high levels of condition damage (i can get bleeds ticking at 127/tick), and she also has four — count them, FOUR — self-heals built in.

she’s a beast. yeah, the steal/zerker thief is fun, i just finished creating my own version, because i wanted to find out about this “perma stealth” thing the op in the other thread was complaining about. and as someone posted, there? it’s possible to stack invisibility up to 12s … and you CAN have a lot of stealth skills built in. but the bottom line is, if you are NOT a superlative player, and you aren’t constantly aware of your surroundings, and you don’t take the time to absolutely know your profession? this build ain’t gonna do jack for ya.

as zacchary said? L2P. if someone’s givin’ you issues? research. find the counters. trust me, they DO exist.

For the love of glob, do it.

Meaning, when enabled, you automatically loot any corpses/bags you pass over or come in range of. As opposed to the current system of “run around in the chaos of a large fight spamming F, only to get snagged by a corpse(usually a useless NPC) which you start reviving”. An aside, you REALLY need to be able to dodge out of reviving, but that’s another post waiting to happen.

This would be kind of handy for world events like Grenth, where claiming your loot helps cut down on culling, but is an absolute necessity in WvW where you often feel like you’re contributing solidly but not being rewarded for it. Because even if you stay alive for like 20 seconds in a big laggy zerg v. zerg and kill a bunch of stuff, you often can’t claim your loot.

You fight valiantly, but your comrades are ultimately driven off, taking with them any chance of getting a revive…and since there’s only one WP every 26 miles or so in WvW, the chances of you getting back to the spot you were alive before your loot bags despawn is slim to none. So you’re just laying these surrounded by 12 or so bags like “wtf”.

At least in world events, you can always count on a revive or there’s a WP within running distance for you to get your butt back there. So come on, Anet. Give us our hard-earned swag.

I’m working on my world completion right now because fun and I like setting goals for myself. But I’d still kind of like a material reward.

As it stands, we get a few little showoff things (whatever) and… 2 Gifts of Exploration. Now, I seem to be one of about two people who really couldn’t care less about legendaries. (I personally find many of them rather ugly, and those that aren’t are either useless to me or don’t match the aesthetics I’ve set for the characters who could wield them.)

However, I feel rather rotten just vendoring them for next to nothing, and I have several friends who would probably be in pain at the thought. I understand that making them tradeable is probably a bad idea, as they’re one of the few parts of a legendary that actually requires playing the game.

Instead, it would be absolutely lovely if either a) the vendor price for GoEs was raised to something significant (perhaps comparable to the present average auction value of the crafted Gifts?) or b) we were given the opportunity to trade it in for something more interesting (perhaps something entirely new, though frankly I’d also be quite happy with a large batch of unidentified dyes or a sizeable selection of T6 crafting mats).

Either option would be far better than the current “Congratulations, you have done basically everything in the open world! Here, have some bragging rights and a couple items useful only to start you in on the arduous and expensive process of acquiring an exceedingly gaudy weapon that’s not actually any more effective than what you’re currently using!”

Hi Anet,

Is it so hard to make text in “guild announcement” editable? It would be so cool if one could EDIT (cut, copy, paste etc) text instead erasing it whole to make minor changes? One more thing: imagine if everyone from guild would receive notification when guild master edited guild announcement! That would be awesome. Last but not least, number of characters limited should also be changed (we in our guild have need for that, we type guild announcements in two languages so we need more characters)

Regards

I definitely think that would increase the immersion! It definitely needs to have proper day/night cycle through out the maps!

Additionally, it would be cool to see some time-of-day changes to the wildlife. At night the bats come out and the birds go to sleep. Swamps can be full of crocs and snakes during the day, and wandering undead and will-o-the-wisps at night. A ranger might have to wait until dark to tame an Owl or Jaguar.

It’s time to fix GAME TIME.

I am tired of stepping out of LA into Gendarran Fields and going from darkest night to brightest day. Time “zones” in the game need to be more consistent. Please ANet, do your best to organize the various world zones into a coordinated schedule.

Since the sun moves BACKWARDS in Tyria (west to east) the sun would rise in Rata Sum first, then work its way east to the Grove and Divinity’s Reach, then LA, followed by Hoelbrak, then the Black Citadel. (ALL regions should be in sync. I am only using the major cities for an example).

We understand that the current map is NOT the whole world. It won’t be midnight in the Grove while it is Noon in Hoelbrak. Depending on how large the world really is, the whole map may be in one stage or another of NIGHT at the same time. I leave that to the game designers to figure out since they have an idea of the full scope of their world.

ALSO, in addition to the local or server time on our mini maps that is already displayable, it would be nice to have a rough indicator of Game Time that we can see. Suggestion:

Midnight to 3AM game time, display Darkest Night
3AM to 6AM game time display Early Morning
6AM to 9AM game time display Morning
9AM to 12 Noon game time display Late Morning
12 Noon to 3PM game time display Afternoon
3PM to 6PM game time display Late Afternoon
6PM to 9PM game time display Evening
9PM to 12 Midnight game time display Late Evening

At exactly Noon and Midnight we should hear each city play their “theme music” that you hear now at seemingly random intervals. (Or MAYBE even at the beginning of each time period?)

I think this would be a GREAT way to schedule holiday events. You can tell everyone that the Fireworks will begin by the fountain in LA in “Late Evening” and we would be coordinated real-worldwide without having to guess and convert real-life time zones. And with coordinated game time, people in far away zones would have some idea when to hustle back to LA to catch those fireworks!

I don’t think this would be a good idea … .

If you would change races, the whole personal story should change too.
A sylvari has a different story then a charr, if you changed your race the story would be a huge mess i guess.

The personal story is your “unique” story of you character, i don’t think they can just change that if you change races.

I think order change only. Gets too messy when you are looking for your human parents, then all the sudden have charr daddy issues.

Let me direct you to this gem of a thread.
https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/game/suggestions/Sollution-Condition-Stacking-Boons/first

Would is be possible to assign or set Key Binding Profiles to a character, instead of the account? I play several characters and rotate them quite often, but the downside is that they keyboard/mouse layouts are all over the board. My mouse button for my Memser/Engi is drastically different than my Thief or Gaurdian.

I currently just learn or change the key bindings on my own, but would LOVE if you could all incorporate a way to change the key binding profiles per a character. That way it could just be seamless from character to character. Thanks!

Yeah to be honest, the healer/dps tank role is just annoying for me personally. I dont find it interesting to know how the PvP match is going to be even be4 the match have started “and def not in a game that is 100% easy to get gear etc.”

In PVE its just as boring, it would just not be any fun if you know what your expecting from each class/roll etc, there would be 1 specefic role for each profession, then the bit of fun we got left would just dissapear and become 1 big boring grind fest, i personally didnt go from every grind free to play game to play holy trinity made games to play a game that would turn out to be the same game as every other “WoW copy”

Beside that, Gw2 is basecly just not fit for this, if this comes out, we need more OP gear to be able to get our “fun” back, and thoese gears have to be OP for each build so it will be hard to get, everyone who doesnt have that specefic gear would just not be able to go CoF, it wouldnt be the fun Gw2 where everything, from the biggining is fun to play, but basecly 1 big “WoW copy” based on another story and a few ekstra things.

“WoW copy is based on the knowledge that we think of the first game, which is normaly the most popular to, when we think of something alike, like the CoD copies etc etc….”

I do not agree, honestly, the lack of these forced roles are what I love of this game.
I am not forced to play a particular profession as I can get all these with any profession I pick. Some are more focused on one of the 3, other less, but still if I want to Dps with a Guardian nothing forbids me, nor if I want to support with a Necro or tank with a Ranger.
And btw, not everyone focuses on DPS at all…I don’t for instance, so I don’t like to be pulled into that.
I hope things will remain exactly as they are, just improved for the best!