Guild Wars 2

I like it as is. It’s means other players can avoid triggering it which means both you AND they do no damage for the duration. This allows regen to heal you up for 3 seconds. This stinks versus HS warriors, obviously.

At 15k HP with decent armour and no significant amount of healing power, you’ll melt like a snowman in summer while roaming. I’d recommend less power and less crit and invest more in healing power.

Guardian roaming builds almost universally rely on sustain through healing while bashing your enemies in the floor with mobility weapons such as the GS and sword.

Chill is a very powerful condition, it works well against all classes but teleports are the ideal counter. I play meditations guardian and when I’m chilled, I use teleports to close gaps too. (if I can’t clear the chill fast enough)

As for ele balance in general. The class can be very powerful, but the amount of skill required to make it as good as most other classes is substantially higher than say for a warrior or a necro.

I compliment every ele that beats me in a 1v1, which has been only 2 so far. Allas.

Lordrosicky.5813:

No wonder EVERYONE, and I mean EVERYONE who tried to play this competitively either quit or just can’t be bothered.

Yes, there are broken builds in this game. Yes, fighting Decap engies, HS warriors and buttonspam rangers/thieves isn’t fun. But no. Not every competetive player has quit. I know many of them and it is possible to overcome all these builds with the right amount of skill and cooperation.

I agree that GW2 isn’t very balanced at times and it can cause frustration but as somebody who’s played PvP in other MMO’s, I can safely say it’s much better here than in most other games. If you time your dodges, use your skills smart and work together to focus objectives, you can do anything.

I still play it for fun but I would also like to see what the current plan is for PvP. Taking away rewards and replacing them with a bit extra rank points is a little silly, moreso since ranks don’t say much anymore.

At least inform your playerbase about your plans for the future.

This is why TL:DR was invented.

Marauding, my good man, is a very, very rude thing to do. ANET cannot endorse it and so the usage of the title was banned for all those who hoped to engage in such horribe acts of plunder and murder.

Indeed, the ranks points we get are already so mighty a reward that asking more would simply be uncourteous. Shiny chests? Glory points? Ugh… I shudder at the thought of receiving things like that. They just clutter your inventory.

I place my unwavering trust in ANET, they have never let us down, they will never let us down. All hail our mighty overlord! May we forever generate revenue absent reward!

Yea, I’d have been rank 45 or so by now then, but I’m 39. I like to show people I’m more skilled by feeding them the dirt though, and then stomping on their corpse. I’ve killed ranks 50-60 where I thought they were noobies. Feels good, in a way.

This is much worse in WvW, where ranks actually give you stuff. I played for months in there, just for fun. Then quit and came back months later and suddenly I was a rank 1 ‘noob’ surrounded by rank 80-120 veterans with leet extra WvW skills.

All you can do to prove you’re deserving of a title higher than theirs at the moment is kill that rank 50 bear and stomp him with a wolf banner! Then feel good about yourself.

I wasn’t sure guardian was the class I’d stick with for the rest of the game but after I went 3v1 in WvW and the fight ended with one dude off a cliff, one down and the other running away, I knew I shouldn’t feel envy for other classes but pity, for they are weak and I am not.

Aza.2105:

Healing signet doesn’t scale well with healing power, its just that HS base healing is so high.

Regen warriors still don’t die. Dunno what they do then but they just don’t die xD

The Primary.6371:

You moa a spirit weapon guardian, you see were I’m going with this?

That’s impossible because they’re a myth and don’t actually exist, bro.

Some valid points.

Many classes have useless traits.

Much of this thread is QQ or simply not true. Mace is a beast of a weapon in PvP and symbols are awesome to nail down areas.

I agree to most of the comments here, but if the passive on VoR is there just to offer something extra, then why does battle presence exist, and if you invest loads into healing power, why doesn’t it actually become a good heal that guardians can use or rely on?

Have you seen regen warriors? The healing power scales really well with HS to the point where breaking a regen warrior is not possible without either loads of conditions or multiple people.

Glad to have helped, from the sound of it, Guardian is the class you’re looking for. ;-)

The core rules are that all healing, no matter how tiny, will always be affected by healing power, and nothing else.

It doesn’t make sense to have healing be increased by power for this and that skill instead of healing power. In other MMO’s they do that but as far as I know, in GW2, there’s no such exceptions to the rules.

If you get power, you get damage, if you get healing power, you get healing. Otherwise many abilities could heal based on precision, toughness, power, condi damage just because it would make it easier, rendering healing power useless.

I like your recommended change, but that little detail will never happen

Wow, you’re really new to GW2.

Okay, first rule of thumb – and I learned this the hard way – there are no defined roles in GW2. You will never, ever, stand back and heal, or whack at a boss and tank, or just dps and do nothing else.

You’ll always attack with whatever weapon you have – example staff. You will use it’s main attack ability, you will use the other abilities as they come off cooldown to heal allies, while damaging enemies, or CC, or grant power to allies.

Playing GW2 is playing the way you want to, and the way you built your character. I’ll give three examples on how support/bunker/zerker works so you get the idea.

As support, you’ll have gear that boosts your beneficial effects on allies, be that healing, boons (buffs) or controlling the enemy with skills. You will choose a weapon that allows you to heal allies with one of its skills, such as the mace.
Then you’ll be in combat, in the front lines because you use a mace, your weapon will allow you on occasion to heal or boon up nearly allies with various effects it has. With you around, they’ll stay alive longer and deal more damage. You will not be dedicated to only healing, you’ll do damage too (but not as much as a full damage build), run around, use heals, help and support. You can swap weapons to a staff, a control/healing weapon which allows you to leave the front lines for a while because its attack is ranged, or stay right there and use your skills in the middle of battle.

As a bunker (tank) you’ll have a lot of defensive gear stats. You’ll take less damage, heal yourself better and while you may not do as much damage you’ll be hard to kill. You can dodge more, control more. Because you don’t go down, you can hold points against 2-3 other people. You can help downed players back up or you can be the backbone or frontline guy who runs in and doesn’t die when pressured. You may use the hammer for example, to snare enemies, CC them or just bash them for good damage.

As zerker (berserker/dps) you’ll have less hit points and less healing. Your skills you select to use won’t be helping allies much but will instead help you heal yourself and deal damage. You rely on your own skills to stay alive – and hopefully nearby support players who will aid you – and deal big damage. You may use the greatsword or the sword, both dps weapons and lay down the pain. You’ll go down fast if you make too many mistakes because there are no healers and a nearby support class can only do so much to help you. Your job is to kill, crush and destroy while keeping yourself alive. This is a hard job as a guardian.

In GW2, your build/your weapons and your chosen utility skills will define how you play. And you are ultimatly also responsible for your own survival. No diving into legions of enemies and hope you get healed or somebody tanks. They will attack you, you will have to dodge, heal yourself, boon yourself and everything to win. Even dps builds can heal and boon, it’s always part of how you’ll play.

I’d recommend checking out a youtube video of GW2 guardian gameplay and you’ll see it’s very versatile. As a guardian, you’ll almost always be in the middle of the fighting, because that’s where they’ll need your help the most.

6/10 for Pocahantas the Sage. It’s basically Pocahontas with some different vowels, it also sounds weird. At least she’s a sage!

7/10 for Tahlkora, a very cool name for a fantasy character and a mesmer. Too bad it’s got princess in front of it or it would have been a certain 8 or 9!

My human male guardian’s name is Aedrion Azuryas (Ah- Zur- Ry- As)

Scaling with power would help it, and the build, but can’t be done.

I do like it though. It would mean you can get some healing with GS abilities and not have to keep using it just to get some tiny heals.

In order:

You don’t want to play a zerker guardian in PvE or WvW unless you either know the class really well or you have a team that can keep you alive. Guardians are much better at… well guarding. That doesn’t mean you’re doomed to be a healbot but it does mean going full dps isn’t really the best choice for this class.

In WvW, guardians are the backbone of a zerg. You have warding lines, shouts, healing and a lot of support abilities. You needn’t run full cleric here. Combine some cleric with some soldier with some knight gear and you’ll have a build that can hit hard, live long and support allies. Zerker is bad in WvW, you’ll die too fast as a guardian.

Being tanky in PvE makes mobs more likely to attack you. Being tanky in WvW means you can support better, rally alies and stay close to other melee for added benefit.

Guardian is exactly what you’re describing there. Medium – but can be high – damage, very good survivability AND good team support.

Game would become too cartoony and weird if icons popped up all over and arrows and bombs mysterious glowed a certain colour, I think.

Imagine WvW where every skill is telegraphed like that, I’d need to buy new brains after my current ones had leaked out my ears after that madness.

Do agree that some skills could use a more obvious animation.

It’s annoying when they cast it on you in a 2v1 where you could have otherwise lived or won. In a 1v1, some dodging, and using the abilities will prevent you dying. Use the wiki to learn the skills. ;-)

Ultimatly, it’s an elite skill, if it did nothing of use then it would be broken.

Footnote: Have you downed a mesmer yet while Moa’d? It’s the best experience in the universe!

I understand Virtue of Courage (VoC) can’t be as good as the warrior’s healing signet or the ranger’s spirit elite because it’s not a utility skill or an elite. Still, I feel like this virtue’s passive isn’t really worth having.

It ticks for about 100 per second with no healing power. Ticks for ~110 with ~300 healing power, ~130 with ~800 healing power and ~145 with 1k+ healing power.

1k+ healing power is a giant investment in healing power, and while it does scale nicely with guardian dodge rolls and regen abilities, the increase in health per second is only about 45. That isn’t much.

I’ve heard many people say that 140 healing per second is good, and that buffing VoC would be overpowered. But really, healing for 1400 health over 10 seconds, isn’t really much. That’s one solid crit from any other class.

In a big fight, or some duels, you’ll be receiving and dealing damage rapidly. Healing for 140 every second – and that’s if you invested in lots of healing power- doesn’t help you when you might get hit for 1-3K in a few seconds. And most builds only have it tick for a about 120. When you’re in need of a heal, VoC passive won’t scratch the itch, even if you have loads of healing power.

It’s far better to use the active for healing, regen and condi cleanse than to try and use the passive for battle presence or sustain.

TL;DR

I would like to see VoC scale better with healing power, because the current scaling doesn’t make the passive useful in any real way.

I’m not saying this because I die a lot, I’m not saying this because I feel guardian is bad, or other classes are better.
I love the balance this game has, no matter how much people QQ about it. I’d say try other MMO’s and feel the pain of what actual imbalance is. You’ll look at GW2 and realise Anet is doing a great job!

It would just be nice to have healing power reward you more by making Battle presence builds or passive regen builds a little more viable.

Stand The Wall.6987:

Lower cooldowns. Done.

Yes. Either this or add more boons to the skills as suggested by the OP. I hate shield at the moment. It’s only helpful in some PvE sitatuations and is pretty much garbage in PvP and WvW :P

Many times I nearly died to this. Retaliation can hurt you so much if you just then decide to unleash a rapid hitting attack.

I ussualy cancel out of the animation by dodging as soon as I notice I’m getting large amount of retaliation damage.

I like retaliation, it’s a nice mechanic to allow defensive builds to deal damage by playing it smart.

I would like to see healing power scale better with Virtue of Resolve.

I mean, everybody ingame agrees that the warrior signet of healing is as close to a hack as you’ll get. So; if that’s just fine, why not give us a bit more than 130 healing per tick with ~850 healing power? I feel that should be more like 160-200 healing, which is STILL less than a warrior’s 400-600 healing per second with their signet and a health pool of 20k+ at all times. It might also encourage Battle Prescence more, whereas now, that trait just feels weak in WvW and PvP.

And don’t say that’s OP, in the middle of combat, where time seems to slow down and you take and deal damage in large numbers, healing for 130 per second doesn’t do all that much. Sure it’s ~1300 HP regen in ten seconds, but that’s if you’re not forced to use it to remove condi’s or heal people around you.

Not to mention 1300 is like a single average crit from most classes.

The health pool is low yes, very low, a minor buff wouldn’t hurt but I feel that that would make healing/tank guardians immortal, unfortunatly. SO it’s probably best to not mess around with it. Unfortunatly, that means Zerker guardians are basically a non-thing in most scenarios outside tPvP and some PvE situations. Just like a burning guardian build is actually really bad. :P

Healing power. Check youtube for roaming builds and all of them will tell you to invest in healing power to some degree. While it’s true that that’ll dent your outgoing damage, it’ll keep you alive trough many a fight when it’s 2v1 or 3v1. Burst builds in WvW don’t tend to work. I’ve tried and there’s just too many ways you can get nuked that way because guardians have 15 hit points when not investing in vitality for some reason. :P

Harbinger.8637:

You only play a few matches on guard so it’s going to take sometime. DPS guard is a lot harder to master then people think.

This is true. Guardian dps builds’ only real ranged weapon is the scepter and that one requires certain builds to work. Overall, I find guardian dps in PvP to be much harder to play than any other class, mostly because of the lack of ranged attacks.

However! I’ve learned how to play it and I can say that while walking or moving around as a dps guard is slow, you have many gap closers and good use of them will allow you to catch up and deal huge damage to people in a very short amount of time.

I’ll try and summarize how I play and what I think the weapon options are for mobility

Sword – This weapon is THE guardian duel weapon, the teleport on the short cooldown is so powerful for us because of the mobility it offers us. The auto-attack hits hard, and hits like a truck with 30 in radiance. Skill 3 is very powerful but you need to use it when people don’t see it coming. Skill 2 and then skill 3 will fail in 80% of all cases because people’s first reaction when you teleport is to dodge.

GS – People say it’s bad in PvP, it’s not. It’s good, but you have to use it without being predictable. Skill 3 will close a gap so that’s awesome and skill 5 – Binding Blade (BB) – can be very powerful. The only mistake you can make with GS is trying to use the combo of skill 5 into skill 2 too often. Leave the BB on them for a while, it lasts for 10 seconds, then when you see them casting; pull them in, interrupt, they’ll have forgtten you had it on them and you can whack away. Another good tip is to pull, wait for the invevitable dodge and simply walk along their dodge, THEN use skill 2 when they can’t escape!

Hammer – Slow auto attack but skill 3 immobilises which mean it’s a gap closer, skill 5 will trap them in a ring of doom with you and your hammer for 5 seconds and skill 2 is just rude in the amount of damage it does.

Scepter – Again, skill 3 is immobilise and can be followed up with skill 2 which hits like a truck. It’s also a ranged weapon! So you don’t really need the mobility even!

Focus – Skill 4 blinds and skill 5 allows you to run over to them without being stunned snared or anything. It’s also just wonderful vs hambow. Watch them waste all their hammer stuns on shield blocks. Yum yum!

Judge’s Intervention is also a gap closer.

I run meditations, GS and Sword/focus sometimes swap weapons, if you time your gap closers for when you really need them, the lack of mobility won’t bother you much anymore!

Good luck!

Too much healing power?

I ran a build similar to this one, lots of healing, focussed on dmg through crit. It works, but doesn’t do any actual worthwhile damage.

Overall, if your goal is to heal allies, yea. This’ll do it. But you’ll basically be a walking medkit. Dodge heals are awesome with this so get sigils or energy too, to get dodge on weapon swap.

I’d say try it out, it may work, but I think you’d be bored after a while of being a walking healbot.

I was fine with it until I saw this, now I can’t unsee the giant fart motion or unhear the massive fart sounds. Thanks! xD

I am not sure what the patch will do. They’re changing zerker, many people fear celestial will become obsolete but I hope not, for all the effort it takes to get it, making it useless would be a kick in the teeth for anyone who crafted it.

As for these builds, I run them in WvW mostly. My main goal there is survival and damage. I support my party with shouts and weapon abilities. I feel knights is good but lacks in the healing departement and doesn’t have enough HP, perhaps swap out the berserker necklace for a cleric, to get that yummy healing power?

Sure it might drop the damage a bit but if healing power is really so important for guardians maybe that’s worth a shot. I feel like celestial jewelry on top of celestial gear isn’t good enough right now.

Help me, oh mighty forum! :O

I don’t know which one is better.

http://gw2skills.net/editor/?fUAQJARWlYgqC33RLEf4ERWhVi9AjZsjXPoYCZIA-jkCBoLBigAisAIBqIasVWFRjVxAT5aR16XAG0ER1+DYCBMaLA-w

or

http://gw2skills.net/editor/?fUAQJARWlUgqC33RKEfIFRuAbBYPwYG741DKmQGC-jkCBoLBigAisAI5rIasVWFRjVxAT5aR16XAG0ER1+DYyAovkitten

nights focusses more on damage and toughness, relying on power and crit damage to kill while relying on tougness to compensate for lower health, healing power is medium.

Celestial focusses on bigger HP and somewhat lesser toughness while also increasing the healing, crit dmg and power values. It relies on critting hard and often to do dmg while being a high hitpoint bastion.

My main problem is that I can’t decide which is the better build! Do I value toughness more or do I value HP more, is a difference of 4% crit noticable? Is a difference of 9% crit dmg noticable? Does that extra healing do anything worthwhile, what about that condi damage? I’m at a loss.

Any advice would be most welcome, assumptions and idioms asside and going purely on the numbers here, which is better?

All you need to know.

It’s more sustained version of your build. Sword is a good weapon but in my opnion its number 3 ability is far too easily dodged in PvP.

Your build works though, it relies on quickly killing them before they kill you. You’ll need to win under 50 seconds or run.

Still, try that build, I run it and everything but engineers melts before it once you master it.

Hah, that’d be epic! Oh no, early dead! DIE RABBIT!

It’s fun, yes.

In group fights, you might even enjoy seeing your hammer smash people around on occasion. But eventually you will realise they die too fast, their special moves often miss and two of them don’t really do anything worthwhile.

You’ll run into classes that easily counter your spirits weapons by having them slowly attack some worthless minion or smash the ground they used to be. You’ll die, you’ll be angry at your shiny weapons and wonder if it’s you, or if they’re just letting you down.

Finally, you’ll look at other guardian builds and realise that spirits weapons in PvP is crap. Fun, but crap. You’ll discover meditations, a line of utility that doesn’t suck in PvP and become a monster that all classes but engineers should fear.

You’ll never use spirit weapons again.

So in short, no, they’e not viable if you want to do good in PvP.

Tome of Courage is good yes, but is the 20 seconds – 30 if traited – of healing and support really worth the 180 second CD, the loss of other utility abilities, weapons skills and get out of jail free card with the Renewed focus unvulnerability?

In some PvE fights, no doubt, but try using it in PvP or WvW.

In PvP you’d need stability for starters, and it’s also focussed on aiding allies, so won’t help much in duels. Overall, I simply whack and butcher any guardian who uses the tomes because I can do far more damage than they can heal with it in those 20 seconds. Guardians using ToW in PvP are ussualy new, because it’s horrible.

In WvW, it can fully heal 5 random allies. In what is likely a ~25-50 people group. Or you can spam heals, but again, not fast enough to prevent total failure if that’s what going to happen. Unlike what people keep saying, in WvW, ToC does not save the day. It helps, but so does blasting a water field with a hammer.

Tome of wrath feels like a racial, it’s on my list of: Never use this, it doesn’t do anything.

I’m not saying make them utility, I’m saying keep them elite, but allow us to use them in a more flexible manner. I’d much rather have a weaker tome of courage/wrath I can quickly rely on when I need it to heal up a bit, hand out boons or deal ranged damage than a 180 panic button that can save your skin… or not.

Engineer kits are an amazing example of how skill versatility can aid yourself, your team and your gameplay experience, I love those things!

I know the point of elite skills is that they’re supposed to look sexy and do nothing but I say nerf the spells in the tomes and make them a kit guardians can equip like an engineer can equip their weapon kits. Add a 10 second cooldown to it, too, to avoid stupid spamming in and out of these tomes, like engies can spam their kits.

And with nerf, I don’t mean reduce the stats a little, I mean: overhaul them completely.

Add a consistent but useful number 1 skill, and change the other skills so that they allow guardians to either support or attack reasonably with the help of their tomes
Think: Grenade kit and Elixir gun!

I know the elite skills can have their moments of glory but let’s be honest, everybody and their grandmother runs Renewed Focus because the tomes are super situational.

And actually, no. This isn’t QQ, I love the game’s balance and skills but it feels such a shame to look at these tomes and come to the same conclusion you come to when looking at spirit weapons: Cool idea! But inferior to this other skill I have which is always useful and doesn’t have this and that drawback.

—prepares to get slammed into the ground by the minority that uses the tomes—

If you think Solo’ing Lupi is fun. You might have a problem. Game is decently balanced, most of the time.

Necro’s will indeed land you with giant amounts of conditions even after using CoP.

I’m afraid the meta is indeed somewhat about conditions but I can give you some advice.

Before using any condition clearing, look at which conditions you have and how long they last. Some conditions like a short duration weakness aren’t worth getting rid off, in some situations even cripple or vulnerability isn’t worth cleansing.

Bleed stacks and burning is generally what’ll kill you, poison can too, because it hampers healing. You’ll want to clear those. High stacks of bleed must go asap or they’ll kill you fast.

Overall, conditions are the go-to type of damage in PvP so you’ll often die stacked with loads of them. There’s no way to really prevent them entirely.

cymerdown.4103:

Try this in sPvP sometime if you enjoy spirit weaps: http://tinyurl.com/kenguardsw01

I’ve tried such builds and yes, they can work but when you look at the metagame or just in overall team utility, the spirit weapons clearly lag behind.
Also, note how many traits you invest in them just to make them viable. Shouts become wickedly useful with just two traits invested in them. Spirit weapons need 4

I’ve been playing a guard for a while now and even though I often take breaks for a few months I always come back and the spirit weapons are still the same. You’d think with all the balance patches, somebody would have tweaked them just a little, to see what happens.

Healing Breeze is just like if I were to blow on an actual wound. It feels better while you’re doing it but when you stop you realise it didn’t do anything.

This build is focussed on bursting down a single target before he can kill you.

That’s certainly possible in PvE and this build will do that but you’ll almost never see it happen in PvP. Many of these abilities do not keep in mind that the target might run, stack you with loads of conditions or simply dodge your big attacks.

Unscathed contenter is just about the most worthless trait in PvP or WvW, Aegis will always be the first thing to go and without Retreat or some investement into re-applying it fast, you’ll never benefit from the 10% damage increase.

Overall, I’d say try this out in PvP where such things are free but I think with a health pool that small and toughness that low you’ll do hugh burst damage, but die before you can finish them off. In team fights or 2V1 you’ll probably also suffer from AoE attacks and big damage.

Most builds for guardians in PvP and such focus around durability or healing with decent damage output.
Try checking out http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1OD4ch9eWf0

It’s the most bursty you can get in PvP without neglecting your survivability to the point where a mosquito bite will kill you.

I love staff AA. It’s amazing in WvW, situationally useful in PvE – if your personal goal isn’t to kill things fast – and it’s a huge AoE attack that we can spam with impunity.

By the way, I’m suprized nobody has remarked how uber it is in a crit-build. I can crit for 2K with this skill on 5 enemies over and over while moving. With the occasional 3K orb of light. Yum yum!

A tiny little utility added to this might be a nice touch though, like a very small heal (40-60) on 5 allies in the wave. Not overpowered and allows us to enjoy feeling useful while spamming this.

Does anyone actually use these?

I personally love the play-style of being able to have a heap of spirit weapons fly around me and cause havoc but the actual use and power they have is so varied and gimmicky that I just never stick with it in the long run. I tried it out in PvP, WvW and PvE and sometimes it works nicely, but generally, it’s not worth the trade-off and I can do better with other builds.

I’ll try summarising my findings in 4 points:

- You need to sink a big load of trait points into these for them to be of any use. While that’s true for some other skills too, spirit weapons are generally completely useless unless you’ve upgraded them with all possible traits. Most skills such as shouts and certainly meditations become better with just a few traits. Spirit weapons need all these traits to be decent, that’s what I find the distinct difference. The most powerful aspect of the spirit weapons is their unique ability. Having them vanish when using it, is such a drawback that you simply must trait into them, otherwise they just hog your utility slot and do nothing but tickle people when used.

- Overal damage. They attack rather slowly and even traited, the damage they cause isn’t exactly high, even with the 50%. They can cause burning, which increases your damage by 10% if you’ve traited for it but really, in terms of flat out damage, they’re not very useful. A valid argument would be that you can have four up at once so the damage spike would be too big if they all had big damage. Still, there are utility combo’s already in the game that do exactly that. Meditations for example can spike my damage so high that I can use it to quickly kill somebody before they realise I teleported.

Overall, this isn’t so much of a problem. They do stick around a fair amount of time – again, if traited – so they eventually deal good damage if not destroyed. I just feel the 50% increase in damage should not be a trait.

- Varied utility. The sword and hammer generally work to smack down an enemy and deal AoE damage but the shield and the bow are designed to impair enemies and heal you and your allies. I understand that you need some of this and some of that for a build to work but it feels odd that you’d put so many points into Radiance and Zeal and invest in pure damage to then have two of your spirit weapons not be damage orientated at all. The variation is nice but you can’t really use the shield or the bow in other – more support orientated – builds because without traits, they’re more or less worthless and other healing skills simply out-do them, such as shouts.

- Cast time. Now this could be just me, but I feel this is the kind of thing there should be a trait for, to make the cast instant. I’ve seen them destroyed in combat quite often and when I summon a new one, I often take quite a bit of damage while casting. Moreso when I have to resummon multiple ones. It’s okay in bigger fights but in duals, you can bet the other guy isn’t going to waste his opportunity for big damage while you’re busy waving your hands. It’s not a biggy, and again, it could be just me but it feels like this would be a better thing to make a trait for than: Spirit Weapons deal 50% more damage, which they should probably do without that trait.

I’d really like to see more people make or use spirit weapon builds but I almost never see anyone use them. I’ve seen them once or twice in PvP but those are mostly gimmicky builds and I’ve never really seen them in WvW or PvE content. I wondered why that is but I think it’s simply because compared to other builds guardians can have, nobody feels spirit weapons is worth the investement.

This isn’t meant as QQ. I love the balance guardians currently have going for them overall and I’d like to commend the Anet team for making the classes so diverse and more or less equal in power. I’d just like to see this heavily underused line of utility skills brought to the forefront somehow and become something we see more often.

Do we actually know what the Elder Dragons are or where they came from?

Were they created by magic or were they born long ago? Were any of them ‘beaten’ before? How many times have they repeated the pattern of rise, regain power and destroy? What’s their link to magic other than eating it?

Living story is awesome but I’d much rather see us go after information and dragon related stuff than space-pirates. :P

Aah, makes sense, probably lies then. I had no real idea about the gods’ power when compared to the dragons’.

I do hope we get some help at some point, Zhaitan let himself be gravely wounded – I refuse to believe that silly bit of gunfire killed him – but I doubt Jormag or Kralkatorrik will allow themselves to be so easily found or fought now.

Recently, we were liberting the temple of Lyssa in Orr from Zhaitan and the high priestess there literally told us that Zhaitan consumed the six gods.

I know it’s possible that’s bluff but afterwards, we went to liberate the temple of Dwayna and guess what that high priestess said. That we don’t stand a chance against Zhaitan, just as the gods didn’t.

I’m unsure if there’s proof that the gods simply left or if they indeed vanished but it feels like these might be subtle hints that their disappearance might have been due to a fight with an Elder Dragon

If that’s true, then there’s no way we, with a few guns could have really killed him.

If he’s dead, then he was a weakling unworthy of all the praise everybody kept giving him.

Dragon of undeath, raises entire continent from the ocean, creates legions of undead, feeds on magic and, has done all of this this possibly countless times before since the rizing of the Elder Dragons is a cycle.

Then he gets his tail blown off, his skin seared by cannonfire and falls into a lake – his body can be found underwater in Arah story mode – and he’s dead? No way.

Logically he’s alive, but just barely. He’s lost his army, control of orr, food and his body is gravely injured. Possibly he’s drifting around now, mostly powerless but also hidden, knowing he’s got to stay that way to recover. We likely find pieces of him that were shot off by the cannons and we assume he’s dead because we havent seen him since the fight.

However, he’s the dragon of undeath, some of his minions barely stick together, his own body appeared to have been made from various dragons. My guess is that some of the Elder Dragons have been defeated before, in earlier cycles. Yet no race was ever able to defeat them ALL, so they were destroyed, the dragons they beat recovered – Zhaitan repaired himself maybe, making him into the monstrosity we’ve seen – and when a next cycle dawned, they were all back.

I doubt we’ll see Zhaitan again in the game – since recovery would likely take decade if not more.
But if the Elder Dragons are that easy to kill, somebody would have done it before.

Nnene.7231:

They problem is not that it’s hard and challenging for lvl 80 team. The problem is that it is SUPPOSED to be the EASIEST and FIRST dungeon that you do at LVL 35, to LEARN how to do dungeons and mechanics and teamwork, and all that. What was wrong with the other AC ? It was easy, of course, for lvl 80 people who had done it a hundred times, but it was still hard and challenging for lvl 35 begginers, so it was the way it SHOULD be, right ?

So why change it ? Just why.

This.

Guild Wars 2 dungeoneering is a horrible experience the first time you do it, everybody does stuff, nobody explains anything and everything does loads of damage. I’m on about lower levels here.

AC is how I learned what to do, where to do it, when to do it, sure I died a lot but I learned. AC was my mentor. If AC was made harder so lvl 80’s have a challenge, that means there’s now NO more dungeon left that’s easy to get into and learn how to play.

Go on about skill and planning and communication all you like, for people without vice chat, and who don’t want to plan every move or fight, this is a very bad design decision.

I’m sure something like this has been around but I did various search options for “backslot” and nothing really solid showed up.

Searching for “back” just gets me links to ALL threads so I thought I’d ask.

Are visuals for the game’s various backslot equipped items planned? I mean, it has a toggle option to display an undisplay but most items I’ve worn have no appearance at all.

I know ArenaNet has the tech required to add capes and the like because several armour pieces have really awesome movement when moving.

Wouldn’t even have to add visuals for all backslots, even a few awesome cape models on the gem store would be amazing.

Does anyone know?