Guild Wars 2

Hotter than the backside of a hairy gorilla wearing rubber pants in the congo at noon….

Numbers? Pffff I use colorful and descriptive words to loosely associate feelings in less than exact terms that are open to interpretation…..You guys and your ridiculous systems.

Been a couple of posts on the SAB forum and no confirmed completion of the achievement. We are pretty sure at this point it is broken, unless we can be told otherwise.

First link shows a fairly in depth search documentation, second post just for more show that we are having frustrations with this achievement.

https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/livingworld/sab-bts/Bauble-Checklist-for-W2-Z3-INCOMPLETE/first

https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/livingworld/sab-bts/Bugged-Master-of-Baubles-World-2-Achievement/first

Any response to this saying yes or no if it is bugged would be appreciated. Even better yet, a total number of baubles in the zone, so we know just how far off we are.

Thank you.

the bread and butter of guardians “is” support.

Might/stability/retaliation/condi cleanse is what we do best I think most would say.

A lot of pages of hate, but just wanted to throw one item out that stood out to me.

Contrary to popular belief, non zerker players don’t necessarily want to face tank and not dodge. Yes it’s true, they want to utilize the game mechanics and avoid big insta kill hits too!

They just want more flexibility in wearing different gear than zerker to feel like they have something their own in a style they enjoy, while still being effective.

anti-meta player assume zerker players are elitist and self centered.

meta players assume anti-meta are unskilled and again self centered.

Everyone is shouting about what they think and not listening to what the other person thinks. It is worse than those “news” talk shows, where everyone has an opinion they are trying to shout out loudest.

BTW, I run meta. Because mechanics at the moment make everything else inferior in pve. There is a meta for wvw and pvp, and it is not always zerker.

I do, however, theory craft a lot to try to find my own flavor of the meta so I can feel like a special snow flake and that I am involved in my character choices.

I think everyone acknowledges that PvE favors zerker stats because of the insta gib mechanics and high health pools of the mobs, while they have simplistic fight patterns.

What frustrates anti-meta players is “why put in all this armor if we are never going to use it?”.

The “worst” part of a condi build is the time it takes to kill.

Specifically, burning stacks in duration and not intensity. So most fights with pure burning will last about 25-35 seconds.

In comparison with burst damage that can do that in a range of 1-8 seconds.

Having multiple layers of conditions or stacking conditions, like confusion, bleeding and torment help provide burst opportunities with condition builds while maintaining pressure with conditions such as burning and poison.

Burning alone is the condition equivalent of direct damage auto attack. Sure if someone stays still long enough and lets it happen, it will kill them.

Side topic:

I used to run key farming when I had way too many black lion chests in my bank, I went through a few iterations of different builds and classes, and I noticed that I had an easier time against higher level targets when I used attacks with secondary condition damage associated with them, because “ding ding ding” it supplemented my damage and it was not mitigated by armor.

So our built in class mechanic of burning with virtue of justice, is a way to add 400-600 damage to our attack rotations with no extra effort.

Downside is now lost in how conditions are applied, condition caps and priorities, and balance pure burst versus hybrid condition application with stats being lost or ineffective as well as “weak” class mechanic in passive virtues and arguable usage on on use virtue effects.

Good idea, but a lot of holes as it pans out.

I really feel that symbols are not as effective as they could be. If a necromancer or a mesmer put stuff on the ground, everyone knows you NEED to get out of it. If a guardian puts a symbol on the ground its just kinda lol.

Our best symbol synergy comes with hammer and altruistic healing + writ of the merciful, as it is a constant application of symbols that only last for a short while, but that’s all you need as it will reapply soon.

We are very good at condition removal, but the rest of the professions are very good at applying conditions. So while you can remove conditions or convert them reliably, it is hard to justify it when they are right back on after our skills are used. I still run condition removal because I want to slow down enemy damage some how and we can do it better than most I think.

As you said, boons don’t make you godmode, and you don’t feel useless without them. So that reads to me that they don’t have a significant impact. You even stated you just think it is annoying and you keep smashing face.

Biggest problem with that is that these boons are what define a lot of our class mechanics and if they don’t matter then our class mechanics fail at the core.

Typical burst setups would combine focus “shield of wrath” with any of those mentioned abilities to provide another big hit.

What I can see happening in that scenario is at least 3 vulnerability, 3 might,
With that you get:
SoW + VoJ + Chains of Light + Smite + Leap + Smite Condition + WW = around 13k dmg
(if all smite strikes hit, which is almost never)

Add in 200% crit damage, you can get about 26k damage, if you are really lucky on all crits and smite strikes to land.

The vision sounds good but a lot of the players find the execution to be lacking.

In regards to rewards, it becomes hard to find a way to keep a sort of horizontal progression and offer meaningful rewards to players that want to play to feel like they gained something substantial out of difficult encounters.

I am against a gear grind and the progression approach, but I understand the basic stimuli that these things fulfill for many players.

So to reward us and not offer a new currency or form of progression, it would have to be something that is sought after by the player base in the current iteration of the game.

The only thing I can think of would be gold, precursors, legendaries, and t6 crafting materials; such as crystaline dust and powerful bloods and the like.

I can’t imagine having legendary items drop so freely being a good thing, even if it is a low percentage drop. Precursors would be enticing, but maybe make legendary items less special if they are so readily available too.

This leaves us at crafting materials and gold. If these things were to drop at a meaningful rate and at a high enough quantity to warrant the upscaling of content for 10-20 or what ever the vision is of people to be doing this content, I think it would encourage a good chunk of the player base to attempt these things.

Maybe even tie in the dropped items to the amount of people attending to some degree? This could be abused though to get 25 people together and result in everyone getting 25 dusts or something to that effect.

As for gold returns, I think this is another thing that players are finding it difficult to obtain, as well as those crafting materials. How to increase the quantity of these items without devaluing them is an issue as always, but there are plenty of gold sinks in the game that I think an increase in earnings outside of the trading post game would not hurt the rest of the population and economy.

Ezeriel.9574:

so basically:

1) drop a symbol and switch to GS
2) drop a symbol and spam blocks

The first idea is interesting, the second is barely delaying the inevitable, once your blocks are gone (i’m imagining a ranger using rapid fire) your stuck in mace, and it’s over

We can be negative all day.

1) GS leap of faith to the ranger
2) let ranger shoot you as he kites away cause you have no gap closer anymore for another 15 seconds.
3) switch to sword and flashing blade, get kited again
4) JI to ranger again and get kited again
5) Profit
.
.
.
6) uninstall game and complain on forums for months to come

In area 3, by second block teleporter puzzle, you can go around the exterior of the cliff on the left side and find a frozen water fall with a purple bubble in it. May be one you are missing, didn’t notice it in your list.

I do see Proven’s point about survivability and support together is powerful, but I am tentative to say that it is overpowered.

Guardian’s enable others to perform better, but don’t exactly perform themselves. That becomes a hard thing to measure as far as effectiveness when playing the guardian because all you do is stay alive and you don’t know if it is helping or not (for conquest it helps for sure as the goal is to contest a point).

I am afraid that the guardian would just get rolled way to easy if some of those suggested changes were made as far as the condition removal and the lack of stability, because without survivability the guardian pretty much has nothing.

The side effect is that every ability the guardian tends to use is all group related. Even the signets which no one uses, have group related effects on use.

As far as offensive guardians, I am yearning for real improvements to be made to make them useful. Yes they can do damage, no they can’t stick to anything (mobility), and they lack almost all survivability possible to obtain that dps, partly due to class mechanics and low base HP.

If the guardian offensive build became more viable to meta, do you think we would see less bunker guards as options open up? Or is the specific role as a guardian with stability/condition removal and some group healing the one and only reason people want guardians.

I see guards have a role, but I feel forced into that role by trait and class mechanics and when you try to expand yourself it often times falls short of the mark that everyone else is at.

So we seem to be at a point where either buff others to be as good as guardians or nerf guardians to allow others to be as good as guardians.

But without this role, I really feel guardians have nothing at all…yet I don’t see them being compensated at all, based on all the class changes and patches over the last year.

Right now your weapon synergy is not matching up with what you want to maintain, which is boons and healing while doing damage.

Sword provides little to no boons. At most you can trait to obtain might on crits and synergize sword with radiance and 1h strength to easily obtain good crit percentage. This will not net you any healing though.

The only way to obtain healing out of sword would be to also take altruistic healing as well. This will provide you with some decent sustain, but you are often better off with a symbol based weapon as it has more reliable boon application, such as hammer or mace.

Staff is good for support and quick self burst healing in groups when linked with altruistic healing, but in general pve it is lack luster. The best use of staff is in zergs for tagging and swiftness application.

If you want to do damage, you have to sacrifice healing. Our sustain abilities do not rely on healing stats overly much, which are monk’s focus and altruistic healing. The downside is, you typically don’t need these in pve and are seen as wasted traits and stats.

If the problem is you want travel speed, you may be better off investing in runes of speed and dropping staff for something else.

If you want to utilize blinds/vulnerability a lot, then sword/focus/greatsword are great for the plethora of blinds along with virtue of justice.

Healing is probably best done with symbol based weapons, and you can advance that to your allies with writ of the merciful which will layer even more self healing on top of regeneration/altruistic healing. You can invest in symbol based damage which does ok in pve as target tend to stay still. You won’t be doing crazy high damage but by layering two symbols on top of each other (mace and greatsword are good combinations) you have a form of burst via double ticking symbols.

Going back to your comment about boon duration/application, this is best done with a shout build, which again leads you more towards support…which takes away from damage. Also, enhancing boon duration does little in the long run, and better off with frequent application than 1-2 extra seconds of boon duration.

If you “need” healing power, don’t go much higher than 500-600 then invest the rest into power/prec/ferocity. Anything past that you lose way too much damage.

Boons you probably should only care about might, vigor, regeneration, and protection. Stability can be swapped in when needed by shouts.

This will lead you to taking empowering might and probably mace or hammer depending on the situation.

Remember though, if you are going deep into symbols you are screwing up your parties ability to stack fire fields and might, so try to mask your light fields after a fire field and/or bring a fire field yourself.

tldr: a whole lot of words to maybe let you make your own decisions (ie I said nothing)

Staff, as you know already, has bad “dps” but it can be used to burst.

Might stacks will provide some good increased power, but you are prone to damage while channeling that.

The primary form of damage for staff is the auto attack. Additionally the orb cast is on a very fast cooldown and will contribute to “dps” if you just cast it on cooldown but not explode the orb. For burst you can pop the orb for extra damage, but normally better to just cast and leave alone.

Another option is to put a sigil of rage on the staff to provide added burst damage and increased dps. With decent crit rating of maybe a low ball 15-20% you should see quickness enough times to enjoy the fast auto attack burn moments.

One more thing to consider is that staff hits multiple enemies with ease, this will proc VoJ very often in clusters. IF you are so inclined you can trait down virtues and pick up Permeating Wrath, to stack ae burn damage, but normally the investment for this is so high that it makes it pointless to get.

So all in all, auto attack, orb auto fire, sigil of rage, and might stack when you can (normally before a fight and not during).

If this is a simple pve fight, you can might stack, place symbol, throw orb/burst it, then continue to auto attack.

Auto spam is great for pve zerg fests as well. For the sake of saying it, don’t bring this to dps in dungeons or be ready to be yelled at. PvP/wvw use as you deem necessary, but don’t expect to be bursting anyone down and reigning over dead bodies.

Symbol and bursting orb are a loss in dps, as I think the empower channel was too.

Dont’ you get it? The princess IS the fifth element last bauble!!

I avoided this thread, but seems not everyone realizes the troll bomb that happened.
Amir.1570 created the initial post and has not responded back once in 4 days. You guys got stirred up and arguing with nobody

Ignore it and walk away so this post dies.

If it is no, then I feel that is a huge oversight. Retal should be the direct counter to conditions and smaller damage based hits, while larger hits should be counter by blocks and dodges.

This could be intentional since they have made changes to reduce the duration of retal as much as possible since at the start we could keep it up pretty much 100% of the time (still has huge up time).

I’m going to have to log into my wife’s account and test out retal on myself later.

Just went into mists and had an NPC stack bleeds on me. No retal damage via bleed ticks =( I really disagree with this.

This is the split personality from the mechanics of the game and the core of this profession at play here.

There are no “healers”. The group oriented healing will be weak, and you are better off with self oriented healing, stated so in their own interviews and game descriptions.

That said, we are supposed to be support/defensive, and since a lot of our abilities become group oriented, they are reduced in effect in order to not create the “healer” role.

So fine, we can support a little bit in the healing aspect, but for the most part everyone should worry about their own health….but then things like healing breeze never see use.

So how do they try to fix it? They make it heal allies more……….but we shouldn’t be healers?

So beyond the fact that the mechanics are backwards, and we should be upfront fighting and not behind our allies healing, it is also fulfilling a role that no one is supposed to take, and that is to pretend to be a dedicated healer.

Devil’s advocate here….we “could” use this ability while everyone in melee range is on one side of the fight, and we are on the other side of the target, thus healing through the target being hit….ok PvE maybe this works, PvP of course it ends up being pointless due to mobile fighting…among other things.

Wow….this is still going on? My math response was kind of tongue and cheek honestly.

I advocate the meta, it does what it is supposed to do.

Additionally I recognize that not all players are capable or like to run the meta, so I understand when people look for alternatives, and don’t question them. Instead I try to help with as little bias as possible.

Lastly, I spend more time on spread sheets and build calculators than I do in the game lately, because I like to theory craft and maybe find the “new” meta or something to that effect. So new ideas are welcome to me and problem sets that need an out of the box answer are fun to figure out.

All in all, I think we have exhausted this thread and are in need of a lock

long thread I didn’t notice till now, and copying my post on the main forum into here to add to the discussion (but I’m sure it’s been said before plenty of times.)

So I made it a point to skip this previous event and I haven’t logged in for the last two weeks. I have to tell you, it’s killing me.

I know the temporary content will be gone in a few days and I completely skipped it, making me feel like I missed out on things.

We have had the achievements discussion before, but it still weighs heavy on me knowing I have a full tab of living story content that will never be completed.

This is fairly detrimental, to the point that I almost want to continue “not” playing.
I liked the original idea of the game where I could stop and start again and not miss much if anything at all.

Now in the sense of competitiveness, yes sure I missed out on dailies and laurels or behind on crafting components and such for ascend…and that does not bother me “as much” it can be an issue for others.

I think this problem is/has been a growing issue and needs to be considered for the future of GW2.

How do you make continuously developing content, that does not remain and become stagnant, yet does not punish people for not doing it in time?

I understand the developers concerns of keeping things fresh and active, but it is having a fairly strong side effect on some players such as myself.

For now, I went back to GW1 to experience some of that lore that I missed out on back in the day.

Love the game, but have concerns.

Jerus, we just argued that guardian does not have “that” much better active defense and passive healing than warrior.

That said I prefer guardian after playing all the classes…I guess I’m a masochist

I really didn’t think the fight was difficult enough to warrent frustration. If anything it is “too” easy. Still i can’t ignore the people that are having problems, but I contest that they are trying too hard and should take a step back and look at what is happening. He does almost no damage, the bombs are what hurt.

It’s like playing othello. Flip his pieces to your color to hurt him. Watch chat to see if he is rearming the mines that you just flipped. Also pay attention to if he is going to cause all mines to explode.

Slow down, look, think.

Everybody had the ability to buy karma weapons for really cheap and mystic forge them into profitable gains > mass amount of people got banned.

This is not an issue of people having full slots. I think you are in denial and trying to justify actions that you want to take. This is an issue about how “easy” it is to make said gold. It is so easy it seems “too good to be true”.

That said, make your decisions and reap your rewards if you like. I am not mocking you, but you are lashing out at everyone else here who simply are concerned that it may or may not be an exploit, yet you call everyone else “not” sane and blame us for not being able to do what you do. That is a lot of outward aggression to others for questioning an act that you want to partake in.

Yes, I think 10 stack sof might when you block a multi hit flury attack like flamethrower is ok.

Retaliation is not BS and typically does less incoming damage than you do outgoing damage, save for group fight scenarios. The main offender of retaliation is it should have a much shorter uptime and in compensation it should do increased damage done to work like a skillful counter play and not a fire and forget boon attached to EVERYTHING guardians do.

Most guards will tell you that they don’t see retaliation as “a guard thing”. Mostly a byproduct of what I feel is a forced and failed class mechanic with bandaid solutions to make it “cool to have”.

In addition, retaliation is “not” guardian specific and other classes can provide retal as well.

Back to Might of the Protector. Typically a Guardian can chain single block attacks up to about 5-6 times every 45ish seconds on average (focus, “retreat!”, VoC). Under the old rule, that would provide about 5 stacks of might for 15 seconds each (enough for saving your offensive cooldowns while you play defensive and then return 1 or 2 “buffed” attacks). I see this as fine because guardian is supposed to be a defensive oriented player, so you reward/compensate defensive play with some return damage.

Shelter tied with Might of the Protector was a prime example of good counter play. It is the “worst” heal, yet it is the “best” utility that guards have. Smart use of shelter during a coordinated burst attack by attacking players will provide the guard 10+ stacks of might (20+ if being attacked by multiple targets). Typically it still only provides 1-2 stacks of might on an uncoordinated attack.

This was fine under the old trait, because it rewarded the guardian for smart counter play, with a 30 second cooldown, or it rewarded the attackers if they were able to force shelter without blowing cooldowns into a block and ended up punishing the guard.

Using shelter for a “heal” will get you killed, but using shelter for damage mitigation will reward you.

Overall I think the Might of the Protector was “in a good place” before the changes, and now it is laughably forgettable.

The key here for those that “don’t get it” is don’t mindlessly attack into a block or mindlessly AE into a cluster of enemies!. Watch your opponents, look for retal/blocks and adjust fire. It is supposed to be active combat with counter play, not spam your buttons harder gameplay.

Unfortunately we keep getting more and more changes diluting and disrupting thoughtful gameplay)

As the game has progressed, so have the players. At release a lot of people didn’t understand mechanics or other professions very well and all they knew was what was advertised.

Guardians were advertised as defensive front line support, so everyone believed that guardians were impossible to kill. Now they know the tricks and understand how to pressure the guard well.

We are still very defensive in nature, but understand what the other classes are doing and you can gain a lot of sustain.

I admit, I find it hard to not get blasted by tons of necro conditions, but the big wells on the ground are easy enough to stay out of.

Same goes for the classic 100b warrior, or a mesmer with clones running at you. Know the tells and dodge/block the big stuff. The rest of the attacks you can survive and heal through for the most part.

I’m not saying guardians are the end all of bunkering, but it does take a little bit more effort now than it did at release.

What give us sustain is:

• Protection (shouts/hammer)
• Healing (AH for team/MF for solo/Regen in general)
• Dodges (Vigor on crit/energy sigils)
• Blind/Block/Invulnerables (Aegis/Renewed Focus/Shelter)
• Control (knock backs/knock downs/Wards)
• Stability

What makes us strong as bunkers is the group retaliation honestly.

If you can survive long enough for your team to come back and then have retal on everyone while the attacking team is trying to AE the point, they end up killing themselves on retal.

I find that ranged and conditions are really painful for guardians, while melee is easier to handle.

Conditions we are better off than other professions at cleansing, but we have a breaking point and there are far more condition applications than condition removals. So use them wisely and watch the high stacks of bleeds, but ignore the low stacks if you can. Try to cleanse poison off before a heal also.

Ranged attacks are still prone to retaliation, but often come stacked with conditions, see above. Other than that you can situationally change up your utilities for wall of reflection or use things like sword to handle those. Line of sight if you can also.

Also never underestimate the viability of getting off the point to survive.

You can leave the point to run people off and stay out of dangerous AE and then get back on the point when the danger is over. You can let it uncap for a few seconds and stay contested…it’s ok really.

If you stay on the point and front the damage and die, you just gave them the point straight up. Keeping it contested at least makes it so both teams are barred from getting points from that node, making it neutral. Then you can buy time for your team to come help and reclaim that point.

Well, that is assuming that the mobs do not attack while moving out of aoe. An additional argument could be added to say, only move out of ground aoe if “dodge” available.

This way if players blow all the damage at once, and the mob has a dodge available, the players wasted dps. baiting a dodge or two out first OR immobilizing the target first would maximize damage done.

Additionally, mobs could block, heal, blind while in aoe. Or some mobs could be enraged while in ground aoe, so that while they take more damage, they will also DO more damage while in the aoe or maybe mobs can’t be blocked or avoided while in aoe…which may discourage mindless spamming of ground target aoe, yet encourage intelligent setup by players and coordination.

There are a lot of creative things that can happen beyond just “players put damage down…mob avoids damage”.

Since not one class is supposed to be a healer or a tank and everyone is supposed to contribute as a group, what can you do for your group? Ideas like reliable consistent regeneration, blinds, heals, weakness. What can you do to help your group stay standing.

If everyone contributes a small part of passive/active damage mitigation will these be enough to make the encounter feel more controllable?

Ideas like thief with venomous aura combined with leeching venoms causing heals

Or guardians and warriors providing regeneration and weakness to reduce damage and provide healing with shouts and banners

spamable blinds to keep big attacks from hitting players.

Lets drop the glass cannon builds and make up team composition ideas for survivability.

Guardians can pull out some pretty good self healing for supporting the group with minor group support. Somewhat selfish on the healing end but still provides useful boons to the group allowing the guardian to stay up and fight. What else is there?

Initial thoughts on survivability and group sustainment focus on:
Aegis, Regeneration, Protection for boons (maybe even vigor for more rolling)
Blindness, Weakness for conditions

On longer cooldowns tends to be:
Fear, immobilize, and to some degree chilled (for running away and not getting hit by melee)

How do YOU bring things to the table?

Inculpatus cedo.9234:

I have been waiting for someone to create a thread about this.

I think the new Level-up Rewards windows are great! Lots of information, and a much better sneak peek at what’s coming up.

I will never understand why ‘clicking’ is considered hard work, though. But, that’s just me.

Great job, Devs! I like it! =)

Wait…what? Why would you be waiting anxiously for someone to make a thread for the pure intent of disagreeing with them? I mean voicing an opinion is fine but motive is sketchy….

Curious about the data behind the chart. Would you be able to do a googledocs of it so I could poke at it and try some of my own builds and theorycrafts?

Dark Saviour.9410:

Thatkitten Rat.1236:

Given that Mordremoth seems to be mostly underground,

So… the turned Sylvari are hipsters. <_<

Best post ever, I need more +1’s

I know it has come up before, but was going through all the guardian weapons and I come across flashing blade and the minuscule damage it has.

I really wonder if this was a typo and flashing blade was supposed to have 267 or 167 damage.

If you look at the attack chain that would line up with it.

269/269/168+168+168
http://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Sword_of_Wrath
http://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Sword_Arc
http://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Sword_Wave

I really really really feel that it was a typo and the programers missed a 1 or 2 at the start of the number.

Compare it with our other gap closer/control abilities and you will see that 67 damage stands out… a lot.

http://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Flashing_Blade
67 damage

http://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Leap_of_Faith
406 damage

http://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Zealot%27s_Embrace
296 damage

http://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Judge%27s_Intervention
122 damage

I have tried swinging 2 weapons at the same time in real life. See eskrima/arnis:

http://youtu.be/Mf8jWtCdFWI?t=50s

Or even fencing with a dagger off hand or a main gauche is a familiar European style of dual wielding combat.

Also there is the Japanese style of combat with 2 weapons: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Miyamoto_Musashi

That is under the assumption that the whole party is zerker but you. So if you are the cause of slower dps the rest of the group will be subjected to more instances of damage that they may or may not be able to handle.

On release, most people shunned those without survivability because they were downed and the mindset was low dps is better than no dps, so in that instance you had groups of people with low damage but high survivability, causing the one player with zerker gear to be the odd man out who would cause the rest of the group heartache because they had low dps and long fights, a downed person caused even longer fights and a general pain in the rear end. All in all the only person that dies is the one without tanky gear and the rest of the group trods on.

As we see now, tables have turned and most people are capable of avoiding the big hits and do enough damage to down enemies and clear dungeons in the matter of minutes instead of hours.

This does not mean every group is zerker though. So when a zerker guy joins a group that is more survival, they now look bad since the fights last longer and they have to play perfectly or get downed (thus they get downed a few times throughout the dungeon).

Turn that around and have a pvt guy in a zerker group. They are angry because fights are again lasting too long and causing them heartache and potentially death. Opposed to the tanky group, if someone comes in against the grain, then the whole group can die because of the long fights versus one person dying.

I sort of fall in the middle of those two mindsets, because I solo a lot and full glass makes it hard to take on some of the champs and events versus my more tanky set up. Yet if I go full tank then I run into long fights that may push the time limit of a dynamic event or just bore me in general.

So pick your groups or find a balance. Most people are polar and like the extremes of one side or the other though.

You guys are arguing that the new trait system is good because the traits themselves are better.

We are arguing that the new trait system is bad, because it limits your ability to mix different trait lines together.

I feel the two arguments are not matching up or discussing the same point.

I do agree that being forced to take a class is a measure of it being too good at something.

We do also have to realize that players drive the meta. Perceptions and opinions are hard to break, so even if there is an alternative, we don’t like change and like to stick with what we know.

I play a guardian as well, and I am on the slightly differing opinion that guardians are continuously falling further and further behind. I also think they are not “as” good as people say, and meditation guard is “ok” but I am never afraid of one as I am with some other classes.

Bunker is one of the few things guard can do well, but if it is the best is up for some debate.

Maybe it is an instance of seeing everyone else changing and advancing versus guards staying stagnant for so long. But the popular opinion is that is a good thing because it shows we are “balanced”.

I do see lots of things wrong with the traits and synergies of a guard though, but I’m sure these are abundant in all the other classes too.

The best reason I heard why guards are still so stable was the group utility such as a ready supply of group: stability, might, condition cleanse, and retaliation. Others can bunk as well, but they tend to be more selfish bunkers versus team bunkers.

Good feedback though, I appreciate it.

Maybe I should stop trying, judging by the trend of changes and the overall feedback of my peers, but these new ideas seem weaker than current tome capabilities.

What they are doing is stripping off what was seen as unused and trying to streamline the tomes to perform without a transformation.

ToC will lose it’s burst heal potential and daze.

ToW will lose it’s burst ranged aoe damage potential and knockdown.

The secondary skills on both tomes (2 and 3 skills) were underused because of such little return and clunky mechanics (bounce mechanics on affliction and purifying ribbon are suboptimal, and suffers targeting los and aiming issues much like focus ray of judgement).

We are gaining a slower more persistent heal (augment of VoR? just make VoR stronger if we need it then!). Also we are gaining a streamlined quickness and another source of fury.

Quickness across the board is under utilized after launch nerf because it was too strong apparently. Fury and crit chance is far from an issue on guardians, so these are unneeded and will augment our ability little to none in my eyes.

Many are just excited that guardians are getting attention finally after long bouts of neglect. New is not better!

The new proposed elites are weaker than current options, and do not solve the problem of Renewed Focus being so instrumental in survival/support/virtue mechanics that it is the top choice.

I fear we are championing this change because we know current tomes are insufficient and accepting a lemon in return

GW2 is like a bad relationship.

People come in with big expectations and they are not happy with the reality when the honeymoon phase wears off. Problem is, if you came into this relationship without self imposed expectations and just took things as they come, it is more enjoyable an experience.

But if you start a game thinking it is “the best game ever”, and then you realize thakittens just a game and it can be fun if you are into the things it provides, then you won’t have set yourself up for failure.

I got over video game hype when I was 12. Flash forward 21 years later my friends don’t understand why I don’t get excited over the latest greatest game and I just say "All those features and new innovative things I saw years ago in “x” game…its just the same thing with better graphics".

I understand general game mechanics and what is generally able to be accomplished within various areas of gaming. Some things impress me but others are just recycled.

That said, GW2 offers things that I enjoy for now. I am sure I won’t play it forever, but I am enjoying it while it is here. That animosity some feel may be self imposed.

I don’t really understand where the charr got the black citadel from anyway.

I know they started out really tribal and basic, then the humans came in and took over. The charr then turned to war technology and developed fast enough to fight back and have been trying to reclaim their lands in ascalon.

The black citadel looks more early asuran in nature as it is so mechanical and looks like a space ship. Yet the asurans use a more glyphic rock/machine/magic look and come from below the ground.

It just feels like the Charr were bestowed machinery from a third party than something they developed purely on their own.

I watched the games, and tage was singled out and downed, because I believe that he as the guardian (not the player) was the weak spot. I tried to look for clutch plays, but mostly it was an onslaught of focus fire on a point.

Tage was playing the role of a point roamer mostly, which could have been better suited with a more mobile class, but mobility wasn’t too much of an issue. After that he played the role of target CC with scepter and hammer immobilize, another war could have covered that either with hammer ae CC or another shoutbow sword immobilize on a shorter cooldown.

Proabably not an optimal choice but another thief could have replaced a medi guard for roaming and target burst lockdown kills. Rangers make good +1 to group fights as well.

I wouldn’t want to advocate for another engie or ele heavy group though, so overall I am glad for the diversity, but felt like something else could have subbed in.

What they did have for them are players who are good at their class playing together as a team, which is probably why they went with a medi guard over any of the other things I suggested.

So no one else is interested in prolonging and epic battle of good and evil in wvw? sadface

Advantage mace has over hammer is:
On demand symbol. Hammer requires you to make contact with the target at least twice before dropping a symbol.

Stop damage via block. Hammer has no block or blind, and it’s damage reduction with protection again needs you to auto attack consistently to gain the boon. Unreliable in pvp.

One handed so you can bring off hand utility such as focus for more blocks. Or shield against range. Or torch for some passive damage. Better off focus normally.

Healing. Hammer has no heals built into it. Mace has heal on auto if you can land 3 hits and provides 100% regeneration boon uptime.

I would love buffs to guardians as I’m one of the first to criticize it. But I am not ignorant to what it can achieve as it is now.

I have seen many threads pop up here and there, some with good suggestions, others with not so good suggestions. The problem is the resounding response of the general guardian community which is “I don’t like it, Guardian’s are fine”.

I have one of every class and two guardians. I love the class and prefer it over anything else, but I do see problems and areas to be tweaked that could help balance us better, or fix broken or not fully fleshed out mechanics.

Still, why are we so adamant against changes and ideas more so than I have seen in other class boards.

Maybe I just see it more cause I’m here more.

While Mak’s break down shows that litany and shelter do roughly the same heals per second and his break down of offensive and defensive mirror what i believe the developer’s intent is….

The truth of the matter that shelter becomes a more valuable heal because of the capability to block multiple incoming attacks, thus in essence healing (mitigating) incoming damage on top of the recovery of 4kish health. It is markedly more defensive and gains a bonus to defense.

Litany is supposed to be more offensive, but it does not offer more offense, just reward if you are successful in your offense, by providing more healing back.

Litany is not strong enough for sustain to continue doing damage in said scenarios though, which is why it is seen as lack luster. The offensive bonus is not observed and game changing enough.

If litany provided a way to do “more” damage while utilizing it, thus reinforcing the offensive nature of it, it would see more utilization. Or if it provided a much higher healing to damage ratio (which is what the majority would like).

A much smaller buff, but one people would be pleased with would be if litany was instant cast like all the meditations now are. That alone may prompt more to use it.

At the moment litany provides so little return on it’s usage that it is often not enough to warrant it’s usage.

As it is now your choices are resolve and shelter. Resolve has a higher hps with better condition control. Yet condition control is not where guards are typically lacking, and shelter can make up for the hps by smart usage of the block function, so 90% of guards use shelter.

open ended question… my mistake

For me, my progress is in understanding game/class mechanics, finding a new build that no one has done, exploration, pvp/competitive gameplay, maybe even become a recognized expert or respected member of the community.

All of that I can do without new gear tiers, if anything more gear would cause those things to be harder to achieve because it would hinder my attempts at doing those things without getting the new gear first.

You said spirit weapons and I immediately got turned off, still I looked at the build and tried to not be biased.

Ignoring spirit weapon life and lack of damage, they do bring good control and projectile blocking.

You have traited for Altruistic Healing, which arguably would go great with self heals and spirit weapons nearby, but you do not have a frequently applying boon source such as empowering might, hammer/mace symbols, or even staff empower.

Condition removal is mostly passive 2 removal with signet and trait, and on demand with renewed focus and lyssa runes, which is actually decent, but still can be overpowered by condi builds…can’t help that much lately though. Not sure i"m sold on the purity sigils but again it may be working for you.

You have no self sustain save for your signet heal, as we already addressed that AH isn’t doing the most for you at the moment.

That said, there is a difference between on paper and actual use. I’m not ecstatic about it, but I won’t discount your build without trying it first. Still maybe some things to consider and you can tweek it a bit?

Maybe explain the playstyle and there is something I didn’t consider.

It’s funny how glacial heart was hated one for ever until the surge of hammer medi guards hit after seeing it work on a winning team.

Now people can’t live without it. I’m still underwhelmed by it, but it does provide some extra burst when tied together with a few more effects. Losing this gives us more soft CC (something we have been asking for a lot now)…so it is like a + and – at the same time?

Easy answer to the original question about conditions.

Get a stack of bleed on you, then remove the signet to see the difference.

Tested in mists and the chieftain does about 74-75 damage on bleed ticks with or without the signet on.

xDudisx.5914:

Making tomes into a signet and one shout is the best idea ever. Will turn 2 useless skills into solid options for guardians.

Will they be solid options? I have a strong feeling that these two new abilities will still be insufficient in terms of survival/utility to take over renewed focus.

Still waiting on the numbers of the proposed skills, but Heal Area will put out more healing in burst quantity than a 10 second ticking heal signet will. They are trying to encourage signet usage which we never ever ever take. So nerfing an under utilized elite and trying to promote signets in one swift movement, yet it is ultimately a nerf in team support.

Tome of Courage Confagrate will push out more damage to a group on a specified point than we will gain from fury/quickness from a shout. We are not in a drastic need of critical chance or fury. Quickness will likely be in short duration (3-5 seconds?).

Both of these new proposed tome replacements are nice sounding but ultimately nerfs to a potential ability we have with current tomes.

The issue is that the tomes did not provide enough reward for the risks. Renewed Focused is seen kitten instrumental in our survival that anything else is a huge sacrifice.

I personally have seen great use of tomes in wvw, and some clutch moments in spvp. PvE they are almost never used.

Making tomes MORE accessible I think is the answer to making them good, not scrapping them and trying to put out a diluted version of them in a shout and signet.

The inherent problem with toughness is that it is a variable which is pitted against attack, and not a flat reduction in damage.

Damage done = (weapon damage) * Power * (skill-specific coefficient) / (target’s Armor)

With the above formula, you will see that damage done is the culmination of weapon damage, power, and the skill used.

Your armor then is used to divide that damage into the actual damage done.

In PvP players have a finite amount of power stats available to them, which allows for toughness to have a fairly stable return on reduction of damage.

In PvE the mobs can be given higher or lower power and coefficient values that are beyond what players can achieve, thus making some encounters pointless to have toughness on because it will never divide the damage down low enough to help.

The majority of the fights you get into in PvE are also predicable enough that you can time dodges to avoid the serious stuff, and the rest is balanced enough to allow anyone no matter what gear they are wearing to survive.

The “play how you like” mentality allowed more flimsy builds that do more damage to survive more range of encounters to allow a wider range of play.

In turn, the tankier builds now have “too” much toughness in comparison to the encounters.

Well now that toughness is theoretically out of the window, player damage has to be accounted for. So mobs are given enough damage mitigation and health to survive full dps builds without it being “too trivial”. But now tanky low damage builds inherently do less damage…resulting in long drawn out fights because of low damage and higher survival that is not needed.

So due to the “play how you like” philosophy, they have in some ways doomed us to play as Glass Cannon (GC) in pve, because in the end the only thing that matters is damage.

Mobs hit soft enough for GC builds to survive, and they are hearty enough for GC builds to not be allowed to solo with ease and trivialize encounters…so all the encounters are balanced, seemingly, on GC.

The remaining mechanics revolve around dodge rolling and active gameplay, which is slow enough to allow a wider range of players to react to it and predictable enough to allow everyone to regen enough energy to dodge when need be.

I hate to say it, but we are killing ourselves with the nice and all inclusive nature of letting more people play

PvP has a little bit less of this issue, but it is still there to some degree, the roles are more defined for each profession because of the meta, which allows some people to be wanted as tanky bunkers.

After that whole spiel, I would like to say that I WANT more variety and I play as a utility, semi tanky guardian, instead of full zerker GC. I have a full set of zerker, and I use it from time to time, but it doesn’t match my play style which is solo and sometimes WvW.

First thought in my head: “Embargo the Largo”

Not that I don’t like the, but because it rhymes :p

Old accounts were apparently grandfathered in, but you are still level gated on new characters to some degree, new accounts apparently are totally restricted by this New Player Experience and the majority of the feed back was an overwhelming NO, yet it hasn’t changed in the last year.

I hate it, but I admit I have seen a post in the past saying they liked it so…meh?