Guild Wars 2

I just brought one of the ascended rings with the new stats. When I tried to infuse it in the mystic forge I found that the recipe to do it does not work with the ring. I guess Anet forgot to add it :<.

I’d like if they removed transformation elites, they are horrible. They would be better if their effects were toned down and the skill works similar to a engi weapon kit. So transformation elites would become like a 3rd weapon set to classes who have them.

Josh Davis.6015:

We agree. There were some PvP-only changes for professions that made sense in a previous meta, but not so much now. I expect we’ll be looking very closely at some of these skills over the next few weeks.

Hey Josh,

Like guardian spirit weapons? Before the nerf no one used them, after the nerf no one used them. Everything about them became worse. Its sad. A part of me would like to create a guardian similar to: http://www.guildwars2hub.com/sites/sardu.tentonhammer.com/files/styles/banner/public/conjured-weapons-guide_0.png

Unfortunately its just impossible and not logical to do. Some nerfs in the beginning of the game for all classes were very hefty. Some never really recovered from those changes.

Timcago.3072:

I am Glad rank 8 in gw 1 — most fun I ever had in a video game.

My pals and I wanted to give gw2 pvp the benefit of the doubt, but the more we played it the more we didn’t like it.

Should I give it another chance? What has improved to make pvp more fun since launch?

I cannot stand king of the hill mode. Is there an actual team deathmatch yet?

There have been changes like the introduction of leaderboards, solo queue and new maps. The meta has changed, but for the most part its remained the same: full of cheese.

If you enjoyed gw1, there isn’t much of what was good about gw1 in gw2. If you are trying to enjoy pvp, the best thing you can try to do is pretend gw1 never existed. So you don’t do comparisons and question yourself on why you are still playing gw2.

Uhtameit.2413:

Aza.2105:

Andele.1306:

Burnfall.9573:

infantrydiv.1620:

Maybe if you wanted a more mobile class you shouldn’t have picked the heavy armor white mage archetype ^.^ not known for being particularly nimble

To begin with, how is it possible in mmo history where a Heavy Set warrior class run fast/er than a cheetah?

also…

How is it possible for a Heavy Set warrior to be the Undisputed King of Speed than the Light Set 125 pound cheetah?

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=V8vejjVgIHg

" This is Why You Can’t Outrun a Cheetah "

Of course

see> Warriors

There are these things called “trains” and “airships” and “charr siege tanks”, all of them run faster than a silly kitty cat for a much longer amount of time, why else do you think that getting away from a warrior feels like surviving a trainwreck? badum tshhh

P.S. To whiny people, if you feel lacking movement speed, play mesmer for a while, if you feel like lacking mobility, play necro for a while; also on that note movement speed =/= mobility.

Your point is invalid, both necro and mesmer have adequate range capabilities.

And guardian has scepter, focus, torch (scepter has the same range regardless of class, and if you wanna 1200 range, just use meditation teleport). As for soft cc, GS has one. That plus the other gap closers that were mentioned and guardian is just fine.

Theoretical perspectives like what you wrote above shows how little you have invested in the class. Theoretically scepter is a 1200 ranged weapon, but this is only when you look at the stats on paper.

Utilizing it in game tells a different tale, its probably one of the worst ranged options in the game. The slow and inaccurate projectiles negate any possible advantage it may have, making it a better melee weapon than ranged weapon. Most guardian who have invested a lot of time into the class will tell you that they use scepter when they do not have a choice, not because its a good weapon.

Focus is a good weapon, but its paired with sword more often. Torch skill 4 hits hard, but the weapon as a whole feels very weak in comparison to focus and even shield. No one really uses torch in wvw, pve or pvp. Seeing that you recommended using the hammer to be able to apply chill shows you have a vast disconnection with the class itself. You are more so clinging to concepts, technicalities and theoretical ideas instead of application itself.

Let me list somethings you forgot to add:

1. If guardian traits to be a bunker, they do no damage.
2. If guardian traits for healing they do no damage.
3. Their boons are gained via utility, meaning they have lengthy cds.
4. Guardian has no mobility compared to ele.
5. Guardian lacks the diversity of ele.

Imbune.5497:

What I see is guardians overreacting and warriors being…well…stupid. Utility is what drags the warrior down in pvp not damage-it makes not one lick of sense to give this generously high dmg profession even more damage when the opponent tries to use defensive spells. Facepalm hard at ppl who compare boon hate on the warrior to things like corrupt boon or arcane thievery-show me a necro who can easily hit 18k+ dmg then we’ll talk.
Alright you get your unfair +12% dmg against say a mesmer with retal, vigor, might and regen up…too bad he’ll pull/daze/knockback/invul/teleport you to tears (where you will of course come and whine on the forums). This dmg increase is pointless; the signet is a step in the right direction (whether or not it’s the right step is yet to be seen…for obvious reasons) as at least it adds utility to the class.
I hope most of you posting are in your early teens-your brains and emotions have a very long way to develop

Healing signet and adrenal health heals more than guardian healing passive. Plus perma regen from banners if you trait it or you can trait vigorous shouts for 2k heals per shout.

Jon,

If you are still watching this thread, I have a question for you. What is the idea behind the scepter skill smite? To my knowledge its the only skill in game that is aoe and splits the damage among each target caught within it.

Why was it designed this way? Its kind of negates the fact that it is a aoe, because you are punished for hitting more than one foe.

Daecollo.9578:

Can Guardian’s mace have a Knockdown/More Healing, perhaps even self protection?

It already has healing power if you trait it.

Problem with mace imo is the slow wind up time for the auto attack 3rd swing. In pvp you usually will not land it, due to moving targets, evade etc. They need to decrease the wind up time greatly.

The mace is a highly immobile weapon which is ironic, since gw2 is a highly mobile game. Bad design choice if you ask me.

I can confirm, they last 3secs. I’ll check shortly in pve.

Edit: But when I use all 3, the fury duration is around 11 secs. So that seems right. Hmmm

1h sword is underrated, I use to be one of those who downplayed the weapon too.

I personally found that when you combine 1h sword with permeating wrath and supreme justice+ condition build, it turns the 1h sword into a aoe machine. I choose torch as my off hand weapon to keep the aoe burn going and for party utility.

Its a great weapon imo!

They will put your birthday gift on the gem store, to which you would need 800 gems to buy. Only available for one day. When you buy it and open it, you will find in it:

Box o Fun,
10 quartz ores
level 20 booster
regeneration booster
random siege blueprint
and 6 silver

MercilessLemurs.7459:

Aza.2105:

MercilessLemurs.7459:

You have a lot of weapon based gap closers and immobilize, thats usually enough.

Those mean little if you can’t stay on the target.

Gap closers and immobilize help you stay on target @@

Who is going to use signet of wrath? Condition damage and a 3/4 for a 3 sec immobilize. Its totally impractical, if you played the class seriously you would understand why.

Chains of light is actually a good skill BUT scepter is not a good weapon. At least not a ranged weapon. Zealot’s embrace is a decent skill but the animation is long and obvious, in a small scaled or 1v1 fight its easily dodged.

Also, since guardian lacks conditions in comparison to other classes. Immobilized is easily removed. What other conditions can be used to keep it covered? Not many.

Hunter.4783:

SO now dear sir, tell me how the guardians can enjoy more variety when half of our skills and traits are worthless? You can try spirit weapons for 5 min before you realize how subpar they are to everything else.

You shouldn’t waste your time asking questions when the only thing you want is others to agree with you so that what you believe will be self justified.

I do not for a minute think that guardian lacks variety, I however do think the vast majority of guardian players do lack variety. Currently the vast majority of the guardian community is hung up with max dps in pve and bunkering in pvp. Heaven forbid the poor soul who comes along who presents something different to these players, they will be shot down and ridiculed.

The new traits do not appeal to these “pve” players because they do not focus on dps. They do not appeal to pvp players because they like their pve counterparts are chained to the idea that guardian only bunkers.

My perspective is that even when Anet does make positive changes that further enhances variety that these players won’t know it if they seen it. Since if it doesn’t fit within their limited spectrum how guardian should play then its quickly rejected.

The only advice to you that I can give is if you are looking for variety then you have to start with yourself and not the class.

So give us samurai armor Anet! It would be great for heavy armor classes.

With this change I imagine that all events will be extremely populated. This means less loot unless Anet graciously fixes the tagging system. At this time the only way to have a chance at loot is to deliver a certain threshold of damage. What will happen with the change is mobs will die before many people ever touch them. Anet has to consider doing a couple things:

1. Greatly increase the base hp of mobs, maybe just make them all vets.

2. Change the tagging system to wear it only requires you to hit it once instead of meeting specific damage requirements.

loseridoit.2756:

Aza.2105:

loseridoit.2756:

8GB ddr4 2400mhz ram

why are you gimping ryzen with low speed ram?

https://www.reddit.com/r/Amd/comments/5zr8lv/i_asked_amd_a_followup_question_about_infinity/?utm_content=title&utm_medium=hot&utm_source=reddit&utm_name=Amd

The Infinity Fabric connects CCX to uncore devices such as memory controllers, PCIe, SATA, USB etc. It is a 256 bi directional crossbar and runs at the speed of the memory controller ( ie when using 2133 Mhz memory, the memory controller clock speed of 1066Mhz is the clock speed of the frabric. Using faster memory increases fabric speed )

That only applies for certain games. It doesn’t really make a difference with gw2. I’ve tried at 2133mhz, 2666, 3000 and 3200. There was no performance difference really. While its true that Ryzen does like faster memory for some games there won’t be a noticeable difference. In addition to that, you probably won’t see 3200mhz ram on Ryzen too often until AMD releases the AGESA this May. Right now, its hard for most people to actually hit 3200mhz.

having faster memory/cpu improves minimum fps.

I dont care about average fps because many instances maybe gpu bottleneck.

Unless you are providing, .1% or 1% lowest frames. I cannot take your anecdote with any grain of salt.

Either way, I wish there was a better discussion about cpu benchmarking.

So far, I wonder how many people understand cpu usage

http://www.brendangregg.com/blog/2017-05-09/cpu-utilization-is-wrong.html

Maybe you should test it yourself with your Ryzen and AM4 platform.

It should be a flat damage reduction. That’s how it was in gw1.

TheDevice.2751:

They are the best pvp build.

Anyone who says otherwise is just kidding themselves lol.

I mean. Every burn guard i’ve even met knows how cheesy they are. XD

Forgot to bring condi removal?

Happened to me awhile ago. Here is the damage log:

I think I was wearing a cleric amulet, with 13k hp. I’m amazed Anet allows that type of skill to stay as it is.

xFireize.6318:

Consecrations and Meditations got buffed. Spirit Weapons actually got buffed too since they lost their vulnerability, although they were pretty much extra HP which didn’t solve the dying problem.

A list of buffs off hand:

1. Unscathed Contender went from 10% to 20%.
2. Conscreatios were buffed: Hallowed Ground gained 20% boon duration, Purging Flames gained 33% condition reduction and a lower cd.
3. Supreme Justice was buffed to 3 attacks to proc burning instead of 4.
5. Meditations were made instant
6. Merciful Intervention had its CD reduced
7. Focused Mind was buffed to give Fury
8. Zealous Blade was made to scale with healing power
9. Powerful Blades was buffed to 10% up from 5%
10. Scepter Power was buffed to 10% up from 5% (I think this was buffed, I could be wrong).
11. Spirit weapons got a trait that increased their damage by 50%
12. Healing Breeze got buffed several times: The first being a area cone increase, the second had its based healing increased for allies and the third happened with the feature patch.
13. Mace of Justice was buffed to give 250 healing power, this gives just as many stats as a entire trait line.
14. Scepter- Orb of Wrath had its velocity increased
15. Pure of Heart: Increased scaling with healing power from 25% to 40%
16. Retributive Armor: Increased the conversion rate from 5% to 7%
17. Searing Flames: Reduced the cooldown from 20 seconds to 10 seconds
18. Shattered Aegis: This trait now applies damage instead of burning
19. Shielded Mind: I’m pretty sure this one got buffed so that it also affects allies.

Out of this list, the majority of guardian players might use one or two. Because the rest of the buffs do not fit into their mentality of how guardian should be played. That is to say that if it does make a dungeon run take 20secs less or in pvp if the changes do not enable the player to kill targets in secs then its not useful.

hihey.1075:

Aza.2105:

Keira Ferland.5619:

Lol, backstab is fine as it is. What really needs looking at is S/P and Dire P/P thieves.

So its fine that a attack with no counter play hits a player with 2100 toughness for 4.7k?

Yes, it is.
Learn to play issue.

I do not mind people being in disagreement. But at the very least you can constructively illustrate what you feel the “learn to play” issue is.

Smigleesmits.7540:

So I’ve been playing spirit Ranger recently to see how good they are, and it is actually a lot of fun. One thing that bothers me however is that the spirits start their cool down once you summon them, meaning enemies have very little incentive to kill spirits as they will likely be ready to summon again anyway, also with the trait Nature’s Revenge they will even be punished for doing so. The only spirit worth killing is the Elite one, for obvious reasons. Having nearly 100% up time on my utility spirits just feels unfair honestly, and that’s probably why the build is so strong right now. I suggest the cool down should be lowered to about 45 seconds, but only starts after the spirits die.

Strange how Guardian spirit weapons begin their cooldown after they vanish.

ArcTheFallen.7682:

PVStar.3658:

Summon bone fiend: 30cd
Summon blood fiend: 20cd
Summon bone minions: 20cd
Summon flesh golem: 60cd (Note: Elite skill with same cd as spirits)
Summon flesh worm: 40cd
Summon shadow fiend: 20cd
Trait to make these recharge 20% faster.

Now, spirit weapons have a cd of between 30 and 60, have a trait to recharge 20% faster and a trait to last 50% longer. Ranger spirits all have a 60 cd, with the elite having a huge 4 minute cd. There are no traits to make them recharge faster. Given the fact that spirits != spirit weapons != minions, have any of you ever taken a step back to think that maybe, just maybe it’s intentional? I’m going to assume not. Stop basing these “facts” on other professions AI skills, because again, spirits != spirit weapons != minions. They all work differently, as they should. Now of course I’m not saying it’s not a bug, it’s possible it is (which if it is ANet need to rework rangers because other than spirit rangers the class is quite subpar), but until it’s confirmed stop trying to say it’s a fact.

I never argued that the design wasn’t intentional, but compared to spirits, they are subpar. They need more buffs on the other AI builds or just remove AI builds period. What competitive game relies on AIs more than the actual player?

GW2…..

Its GW1 “made simple”.

When I seen scarlet did it, I just /shrug. Why Anet decided to completely abandon gw1 lore is beyond me. It wasn’t premium but it was much more interesting than this.

Toughness use to be good, but not now. It doesn’t really make a difference. I’ve tried just to be curious.

With Dragon Hunter I ran knight amulet, signet of judgement with perfection inscriptions (12% dmg reduction), hunter’s fortification (10% dmg reduction with no conditions on you), scrapper rune, shield with honorable shield trait (250 toughness while using a shield) and retributive armor (250 toughness every time you block, it doesn’t stack).

So I had crazy physical damage reduction and guess what? I still melted like butter. Damage is so insanely high at this time that I can’t recommend investing in toughness. Its no longer worth it.

Amir.1570:

Guards always been a brain dead class. Low skill floor, low skill cap, high reward. I don’t think they should be tweaked in all honesty because anyone can pick up a guardian and be good at it the moment you know how to peel for your allies and pay attention to your allies hp and conditions.

Supports in most games are just meant to be easy and effective. They really shouldn’t touch Guardian anymore unless every class has to be touched for more variety.

This describes every class in game currently. Low skill floor, high reward.

Sly.9518:

You mean poorly executed by having Lowest Weapon CDs, Highest Armor, Highest HP, Highest Passive Health regen, High Block uptime, a lot of pseudo invulnerabilities, lowest Weapon Swap recharge, High Damage…… or do you mean now it doesn’t play itself as much that it’s bad now?

I think you bring up some valid points in a lot of your posts, but what I noticed about you is that you are straight up biased. You don’t do this with thief since you play the class and view it through rose colored glasses. If thief had all of that and people were complaining I’m sure you would be telling them to learn to play or learn to counter play their mechanics. You need to learn to be partial, like I said I can respect some of the stuff you say but when I see you go in like this then its sort of hard to respect your opinion.

And btw, you forgot to add that warrior has the most telegraphed skill animations in the game. Making it very easy to dodge and predict what they are going to do.

Hunter.4783:

This patch brought NOTHING to guardians but a heavy nerf (vigor).

All the GM traits are trash…even worse so.

A passive GRANDMASTER trait that gives 3k health in the hopes to fix the huge HP disparity with warriors? Boring and will never get picked over Pure of Voice.

Communal defenses sounded cool until we found out it didn’t give back aegis to the guardian AND had a 20 sec internal cooldown.

Virtues trait tries to balance the nerf to Vigor but fails because traits X and IX will ALWAYS be better. if I even went 30 points in virtues I would sure as hell pick IX and X, never this new trait.

And now, the best for last…the zeal and radiance traits…

What can I say, I thought they were a joke at the start, but lo and behold, they were not. Funny thing is that we already have another grandmaster trait in zeal which also buffs burn damage, so I wonder, why have 2 traits only the same trait line which pretty much do the same thing? Are the devs braindead when it comes to guardians? Do none of the QA ever play guardians? Was this trait a mistake?

Radiant retaliation….equally as bad as the zeal trait… Anet hopes to push guardians towards a condi heavy build while giving the class no means to apply any other cover condies nor have a reliable ranged way to spam conditions ala necro, thief, warrior, etc.
Again, this trait is an absolute joke.

Why is the community ignored when it comes to this class? Guardian is now the most boring and 1 dimentional class in the game and everyday guardian veterans and switching over to warriors.

Why are our spirit weapons STILL broken to this day? Why are half our signets worthless?

While some of what you say has truth to it, most of what you are saying is mere bickering. On patch day I came to a startling conclusion: Its not the guardian class that has become stagnate, its the people who play them that have.

Most guardian players are hog tied to certain ideas of what they feel guardian is and what it can do in most game play modes. The result is that innovation is choked since the vast majority of the guardian community does not take the time to sit down to try to experiment and draw their own conclusions. Instead, they need to wait for someone to lead them into trying different builds. When it takes one individual to make videos and threads of possible builds to even get most of the community to try something new, you know there is a problem.

With this patch, most guardian players shot down the new traits before even giving them a try. Why? Because in reality they do not want new things, they are fine with what they have. They only want things that confirm what they personally feel the class is. So if something new is presented and it does not fit their ideal of what guardian should have, they will reject it.

The class feels rigid and non innovative because most of the players are. This will continue as long as guardian players remain fixated on what they deem “viable builds”.

Just got a loss because a team mate got stuck in the clock tower wall on Battle of Khylo. How long has this glitch been around and not been fix?

Obtena.7952:

Only 3 hits to trigger passive VoJ. Used to be 4.

Old news. They changed this sometime ago.

Virtues VIII—Supreme Justice: Decreased the number of attacks from 4 to 3.

https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/info/updates/Game-Update-Notes-December-10-2013/first#post3412596

As a guardian player I feel the strengths of the class is:

1. The ability to spread boons to surrounding allies.
2. Provide allies with sustain via heals
3. Excellent group utility
4. Highest burning damage in the game

The weaknesses of the class are:

1. Low health
2. Mediocre mobility
3. No escape options
4. Lack of reliable cripple or chill
5. Very extreme, do a lot of damage and become glassy. Or become a bunker and do no damage. Guardian really doesn’t have a great middle ground.

Wirldwide.8046:

JaNordy.6149:

Here is a genius idea. Fix the most broken autoattack in the game in Guard scepter. Its been what, since beta that this has been in game? No attack in the game is more broken and worthless than scepter autoattack. How about next patch we finally take care of this obviously “MINOR” problem that clearly has no effect on gameplay at all!

I have always been able to auto attack with the scepter on a guardian even in beta. So I’m not sure what it is you are talking about. Maybe you could explain in detail what the issue is?

Stop fighting stationary targets.

I believe the problem is that Anet has spoiled players with bad boss fights which only require them to stand in one place, auto attack and occasionally dodge. Most dungeon bosses are this way and most open world bosses are this way. What do players do at maw? Stand and auto attack. What do players do at shat? Stand and auto attack. What do players do at karka? Stand and auto attack and maybe dodge when it stomps and rolls.

Now they introduce a fight that requires players to use more than one button and requires movement. Skills that most players failed to develop because of earlier game mechanics.

I do not know how many times I watched players fail to kite the spinning champion into mines. How many failed the 4th champ because they stood in aoe. The element of utilizing skills and tactics are devoid in most players due to the reasons I named. Its unfortunate, I don’t necessarily blame them. But the boss mechanics in game before this event.

Overall I feel marionette is a good start to solving the mindless stacking, standing still and auto attacking mentality.

This sigil is cancerous lol.

gamefreak.5673:

I am sorry about this change for your skills. They are now in line with necro minions and ranger spirits so welcome to the club i guess for what it is worth.

I didn’t know ranger and necro summons were destroyed when they used a skill related to it.

Cynz.9437:

Pointless since thief entire survival is based on stealth. Add some other way of survival and thieves will stop going into stealth so much.

This is a example of the problem with gw2, that the element of risk/punishment is removed.

Stealth should absolutely be removed if thief/mesmer swings at the target when they have aegis or the target evades, or the thief/mesmer has blind on them. It just means you just got counter played and thus you are experiencing punishment.

As it stands now, all that happens is a thief will have backstab blocked/evaded or miss it and they will just do it again and again until it lands. Risk vs reward raises the skill floor of pvp. Just having rewards with no risks only promotes non intelligent game play.

incandescence.6784:

Even then, what do you mean .5 second larcenous strike is too short for people to hit you, is this a joke? You are doing no damage, they will spam all kinds of crap at you and will ALWAYS hit you in that .five seconds, someone good will hit you with interrupts, knock downs, etc.

.5 secs is nothing considering skill animation, cast time and lag. It makes the window of vulnerability extraordinarily small. Regardless, it doesn’t take S/D a ounce of timing to spam, yet it takes the player on the receiving in to react with strict timing.

Some people seem to miss the point of the OP’s calculations. One thing that is being looked over is the fact that S/D can avoid damage at any time. Because of this, decision making is absent since dodge and evade has a beyond high uptime. Dodge is suppose to be used to escape damage, however if you blow it on something that isn’t very threatening, then you might not have the endurance to dodge a big hitter. Basically there is a reward or punishment factor depending how one utilizes dodge.

That entire concept is absent with S/D thief, which is why the OP said: “You might as well just give everyone passive invulnerability with short periods of down time, especially considering this takes essentially spamming only 2 buttons to achieve.”

Because thats what it boils down to. For the sake of understanding, evade, dodge and invul are basically the same mechanic with different names. All of them completely mitigate damage.

Block is also in that category, but I didn’t mention it because its function is much more limited. In addition to unblockable skills already existing in game.

Zacchary.6183:

RyuDragnier.9476:

Zacchary.6183:

EDIT: Secondly, why the hell are you burning skills while a thief is in stealth? Bust out your auto.

Auto only works if you’re not using weapons that have cleave. If they don’t, there’s no point because you will not hit anything.

Yes it will. If a projectile hits something in stealth, it will deal damage and disappear unless it has piercing. Then it will just keep flying. If the stealthed enemy is in front of you and you are swinging with a (let’s just say) dagger, it is going to clip him and the chain will progress.

Try it sometime.

Your example is rather one sided.

With the introduction of boon hate, they should make all of guardian skills do holy damage. Which does double damage to necro pets and necros in death shroud. And hammer skill #4 banish should automatically remove summons and pets when used.

Keep the mechanics, keep the difficulty, but make it into a guild mission that you do once per week. That way guilds can actually coordinate the encounter.

People keep mentioning how players need to coordinate to beat teq, but this is impossible and a high expectation for people who play just to do their own thing. There will always be lots of people who do not cooperate. What will you do? Kick them? You can’t, you must deal with them being there.

This encounter is designed for coordination, not casual open world stuff.

Aeolus.3615:

Imo guardian healing isnt that good except for the elite tome and the aoe heal metitation with teleport, and proly healing breeze.
I always saw guardian acting more like a protection monk while healing is suposed to be within water eles and other classes waterfields since even engi can get is own waterfield blast.

Hmmmm I’m not sure I can entirely agree, though I can see how you are comparing guardian to a protection monk. My opinion is most players look at healing the wrong way:

• They try to compare it to traditional healers found in mmos

In traditional mmos, healers generally play a passive/back line role. They do not attack but their entire focus is on healing. Healing is a direct counter to damage. You can be hit for 7k, but the healer can heal for 7k.

In gw2, healing takes a active role. Most heals involve being active in some form, while few allow you to sit back and heal. When I say active I mean that you are actively participating in combat, hitting the mob or player. One example of a active heal is the auto attack for mace or staff ele with water attunement. Many skills and weapons follow this pattern in some way or form.

What is interesting about tome of courage is it allows you to become a traditional healer, albeit for a very short duration. This would be a direct example of a passive role, with tome up you can just sit back and heal. But this type of play style is very rare in the game.

• Most associate healing being bad because it doesn’t produce large numbers similar to what is found in dps

The way I see healing in gw2 is a form of mitigation along side of protection and aegis. I view it as a mechanic used to fill in the intervals when defensive skills, boons, and dodge are on cooldown. I do not see it as a form of mitigation that directly counters damage but a form of mitigation that alleviates it.

One of the strongest perceived heals in game is healing signet, but looking at how much it heals per second (362 per sec), its not very large compared to how much damage a class can dish out in the same time frame. But over time in conjunction with other defensive mechanics mitigates a lot of damage. Guardian has similar and often times greater abilities. Zealous blade with healing power provides significant mitigation. So does selfless daring, VoR with absolute resolution.

Tarsius has a great chart exploring guardian healing. I would recommend everyone take a look at it if they have not already.

Meehael.8240:

Make a PVE reward track for gifts of exploration. This way we kill two flies in one swing: one char can obtain multiple gifts and new chars have all waypoints unlocked.

This is actually a great idea.

jportell.2197:

Aza.2105:

jportell.2197:

Aza.2105:

Its ironic, defensive builds were quite good in gw1 pve. Now its just the opposite.

Its not that they aren’t good you could prolly do every dungeon in this game with groups of nothing but full tanks for each class… It will be somewhat irrelevant though because of how bad healing power scales in the game and how well dps scales.

Absolutely.

However, I’m convinced that Anet feels healing power and defensive stats like toughness are in a good place.

From a PvP stand point absolutely. However in pve as long as mobs have the ability to one shot you regardless of your toughness you’re just better off doing more dps

Yep.

In that regard I felt pve in gw1 had more depth, because the mobs used the same skills players had and not one shot mechanics. So it gave encounters more variety.

Slayer.4238:

Look at this rank
Isn’t it neat?
Wouldn’t you think my life is complete?
Wouldn’t you think I’m the guy
The guy who has everything?
Look at this account
Treasures untold
How many achievements can one account hold?
Looking around here you think
Sure, he’s got everything
I’ve got CM and Orian boxes a-plenty
I’ve got exotic and ascended galore
You want WvW boosters?
I’ve got twenty!
But who cares?
No big deal
I want more!!!!!!!!!
I wanna be where the elitists are
I wanna see
Wanna see ‘em pawning’
Walkin’ around on those
Whad’ya call ‘em?
Oh – noobs
Switchin’ your builds you don’t get too far
Metas are required for playin’, winin’
Strollin’ along down a
What’s those words again?
reward track
Up where they walk
Up where they pawn
Up where they play all day in the (virtual) sun
Roamin’ all free
Wish I could be
Part of that world
What would I give
If I could live
With out these gibs?
What would I pay
To spend a day
havin fun while I play…
Betcha on hand
we’d understand
Bet they don’t reprimand their new players
Bright young newbies
Elites sick o’ lowbies’
Ready to stand
And I’m ready to know what the try hards know
Ask ‘em my questions
And get some answers
What’s a nuke build and why does it
What’s the word? Burn?
When’s it my turn?
Wouldn’t I love
Love to explore those ranks up above?
Out of glory
Wish I could be
Part of that world

LOL!

Asuka Shikinami.5462:

The crit damage changes may be to accomidate the balence differences in pvp/wvw. All balence is based around the glourious esports yet crit damage can be so much higher in wvw – meaning burst skills become far more powerful than their pvp components when comparing the ratio of offense to defense stats other than crit damage.

Anet may be trying to tone down the burst so people complain less about 15k killshots, 8k backstabs etc (while burst is nice, we have to be realistic about how much shere burst can be achieved in wvw and how this affects the game as a whole, not just for people who want to ‘one shot all the noobs like a master assassin’. Ascended gear has made this even worse.

This sounds about right.

When you look at the max stats achievable in spvp, they are almost identical as they are on a pve character in exotics. The only difference is the crit damage achievable in pve is nearly doubled the amount. I always found this disparity very odd.

Yes the result of crit damage being so high is 8-14k back stabs and kill shots. While those skills do good damage in a spvp setting, they are no where near that high.

Obtena.7952:

It’s not me you disagree with, it’s Anet; they established the class is in a good place, not me. The lack of critical thinking is the correlation maked by cherrypicking a few under performing skills and observing there are unhappy players and concluding the class doesn’t hit Anet’s desired performance target based on those things.

On the other hand, it’s not hard to see that even though there are some under performing skills and unhappy people, the class can skill hit whatever performance targets Anet may have. Furthermore, there are other classes that people would consider quite good, and those classes also have some under performing skills and unhappy people. In conclusion, some under performing skills and unhappy people should not make anyone that has applied critical thinking to the topic to conclude Guardians don’t meet Anet’s targets or that those two things are necessarily significant factors to a classes ability make those targets.

Yea but you aren’t a mouth for anet, so why take the stance like you understand exactly what the developers are thinking?

What I said is completely reasonable, signets, spirit weapons and to a degree consecrations have been hot garbage since launch. That is almost 4 years of being garbage. I don’t know about you man, but that is a long kitten time. And that isn’t just a “few” skills. Its actually quite a lot, plus the traits associated with them. I didn’t even bother to mention weapon sets either.

When you have system mechanics that give the player choice on how to build and play their character, but many of the choices aren’t choices at all but “why would I use this over this”. Then there is a problem with design. Its understandable if there is just a skill here and there that isn’t very practical, but guardian as well as every other class have a lot of skills and traits that just aren’t viable choices but fillers.

With the way they balance the game skills, it seems to me that its overwhelming to them. Even though its significantly less than GW1, they have done a worse job at presenting realistic choices between skills and traits. They would be better off creating a very limited and closed skill system than having what we use today.

Experiencing the samething. Thank you anet!

godz raiden.2631:

Aza.2105:

godz raiden.2631:

LordByron.8369:

godz raiden.2631:

You can react to stealth, by definition. Do you play in WvW as if you’re a clueless NPC? “Welp the thief went stealth, guess he disappeared for good.”

Maybe you should start to learn what is prediction and what is reaction…
Without those basic concepts you lack the knowledge required for a balancing discussion…..

Even with any good idea you could possibly have you will still miss part of the picture…

You’re having that much difficulty “predicting” that stealth thieves are going to backstab you? Are you aware of where your back is located on your characters? If yes, then I am correct, and your issue is not being able to “react.” Stop acting like you’re above the rest of the community and shouldn’t have to play against thieves simply because you don’t want to turn around when a thief enters stealth. You’re making the assumption that you can’t react to stealth only because you don’t WANT to react to it. Try to better your play instead of complaining about it on the forum.

I guess it’s fair for you to say that I’m missing part of the picture. It’s the part where somehow you’re above the rest of us and shouldn’t have to learn how to play against thieves. Get over yourself.

This is just wrong. Despite the text description of backstab, it doesn’t need to hit the back of its targets to do double damage. It works on the side of the target too. So to land it you use it any where but the front of the target. Its not hard to land and impossible to counter play.

Aegis, blocks, retaliation, protection, invulnerabilities, and evades/dodges all mitigate/negate the damage from backstab.

“Crud! That thief just went stealth and is going to backstab me. Guess I’ll die because I didn’t pack any of those handy defensive mechanics Anet was so generous to include in every single classes skill sets and utilities!”

It might not be hard to land a backstab, but it’s a whole lot easier to block or dodge one. It’s easy to tell when I’m playing against someone who isn’t kitten y on my thief. They don’t just smash all of their defensive skills at the same time and then wonder why they died. They space out their abilities and REACT to me being in stealth. The sooner you guys get this sort of stuff through your heads, the sooner you can make it back to your precious zerg that you can’t survive without.

Also, there are plenty of things that don’t work exactly how the tool tip states. Look at the mistlock instability on fractal level 33 :P (off-topic, but actually relevant to the things not acting properly when hitting from behind and the side actually. I think it’s just difficult to properly code that sort of stuff, so don’t take that out on the players. We didn’t design the skill.)

The problem with your reasoning is your under the assumption that defensive skills negate backstab. This would very well be true if a missed/block/evaded backstab caused the thief to come out of stealth. But this does not happen. So they just do backstab again and again until they land it. The thief player receives no punishment for failing his/her backstab, but the player receives punishment even though they may have intelligently utilized their defensive skills to counter the attack.

One common problem I observe with people in games is they begin to identify themselves as the class itself, as if the class is a extension of themselves. Suggestions and problems with faulty aspects of the class become like personal attacks to them.

You blamed people for not reacting to you in stealth. But this is a oxymoron, how do you react to something you can’t see? Part of the advantage of stealth is they can see everything you do and make choices that reflect upon their observation, but the person who isn’t stealth does not have the same advantage. They can only guess or react based on instinct.

For a healthy pvp game counterplay is absolutely necessary. Stealth is in desperate need for it and it was a mistake of Anet not to include counterplay options for all classes.

The class is very “slippery” which gives them very high mitigation when played correctly. With high mobility, high damage, stealth and extraordinary ability to blind targets, causes the class to have better mitigation than a character specifically built to withstand damage.

The best form of mitigation is not to get hit at all. Combined with a very high damage output that doesn’t have any warning signs to counter play. It makes the class quite deadly.