Guild Wars 2

Heinel.6548:

The best description that can fit the guardian ATM is a magical soldier with innate fragility, that is overcome by having a larger repertoire of defensive abilities. Said abilities may be boons, it may be something else.

Just wanted to point out, this is extremely important to understand. When you cut to the chase, the above is what you find.

This means as a Guardian, when you choose to be a glass cannon, go balanced, or go bunker, the following happens:

-If you go glass cannon you’ll drop very easily, and won’t have the burst of a glass cannon Warrior or Thief. We’ve all seen the damage those can do.

-If you go bunker, you gain a colossal amount of survival, and decent (or more) support along the way. As a sacrifice you lose a lot damage, and likely have to use a defensive playstyle.

-If you go balance, you gain a decent amount of damage compared to bunker as expected, but you still don’t gain nearly as much damage/control as you give up in survival/support. Almost every criticism I have about the Guardian stems from this.

The only build that really breaks the above mold is some variation of 10/30/30 or a Meditation build. The problem with that though, is you lose out on your utilities and dedicate your entire build to one thing: essentially 1v1 viability.

Summary: The main problem with the Guardian is that in not going for a bunker style build, you don’t gain much in return. This problem is only reinforced by most of the community being indifferent or satisfied with this, as most seem content with bunker or support style builds.

Obtena.7952:

The only fix that hammer needs is for 3 and 5 to work more effectively in PVP. If you hate it because it’s slow, low damage, or not sexy enough with SoP, there are 11 other weapon combos for you to play without claiming hammer is ‘awful’ or ‘crap’ to push an agenda.

And you’re not making this post to “push an agenda”?

Everyone has an “agenda” the only difference between people is if they are open about their intentions. Actually, I would say everyone’s “agenda” is pretty obvious. You either want a change or you don’t.

Indure.5410:

Alarox.4590:

Every thread like this is either:

1.) Guardians are awesome, Warriors suck.

2.) Warriors are awesome, Guardians suck.

Both are awesome but they also really suck

I like both, and they both can kick kitten but yeah they both suffer. They’re both seen as OP because of their most popular builds. Guardians run AH, people say the entire profession is OP. Warriors run GS/axe or Rifle burst, people say the entire profession is OP.

Every thread like this is either:

1.) Guardians are awesome, Warriors suck.

2.) Warriors are awesome, Guardians suck.

A few problems I feel like mentioning:

1.) “Sustained DPS”

Basically, it’s saying that even though you lack burst, your auto-attack spamming deals enough damage. Warriors also have auto-spamming. The people I see claim this the most are the Pow/Tuf/Vit AH builds that hit enemies with a wet noodle.

Actually, both professions can build for burst. The only difference there is that when you build for damage, the Warrior is high risk/reward while the Guardian’s is overall less but easier to land. For example, Mighty Blow vs Eviscerate. 100b vs Whirling Wrath.

The only time this argument has validity is when you have an offensive Guardian with the Sword or Greatsword, or a Hammer in PvE

2.) “Guardian traits are fine. Learn to think”. Poor logic.

3.) Your claims about symbols can be true, but not always. You’re basically just describing how to use symbols when someone attacks you in melee. In other words, you’re saying that symbols aren’t bad, because you should use them when someone walks next to you.

Actually, I agree that symbols are mostly fine the way they are, but I think they could use more utility options for area control.

3.) “Guardians have only 1 flaw”. In other words, “everything about Guardians is perfect the way it is except 1h weapons”. First, 1h weapons can be quite good depending on the build and the usage. Second, I probably shouldn’t even go on as you basically lose credibility by this statement.

4.) You basically say that Virtues are overpowered, if you don’t think so too then you must be an idiot who spams them all at once.

5.) You say Warriors aren’t superior to Guardians in any way whatsoever. How about offensive buffing? Burst? Ranged damage? Burst healing?

6.) You basically say that if you don’t also think Guardians are completely superior to Warriors, then you must not be able to handle the Guardian since they require more thinking.

7.) Not every situation is favorable to be in melee, in fact many ensure almost instant death. In addition, your logic is flawed. For example, imagine if you had a profession that dealt damage to itself and healed enemies when attacking. By your logic, ArenaNet doesn’t need to change that, and anyone playing that profession should just not attack. You’re basically saying that it doesn’t matter if something is unbalanced, the players should just deal with it.

Obtena.7952:

Meow.5794:

no more comments on this? the community got this few sword users or what??? cuz the skill have been broken since the beginning.

Maybe not many comments because some people don’t think it’s actually broken. Not all weapons need to be all things to all players. If it’s not good in WvW but it’s great for sPvP and PVE, I don’t see a problem with that.

Compared to most burst skills, it’s pretty bad. Low damage (relative), immobilizes you, single target, long cooldown.

tanshiniza.8629:

The only time this attack works is if you catch people by surprise and you are literally and standing so close to them you may as well get married and have 3 kids together. Considering this is meant to be a potential ranged attack it really leaves much to be desired.

Pretty much.

Where did you hear that grenade barrage and wrench throw were removed? Sounds like you got trolled.

Sororita.3465:

you guys realized hes in a BL spawn point so his vitality/hp is increased right? hes probably around 17k-18k

Wrong. You don’t get buffs from being in a spawn. You get buffs by being next to the NPC commander, which isn’t even on that map in the screen-shot.

Lonewolf Kai.3682:

Necro.1734:

Recently I’m running Fractals (10 – 18, depends how many time we have) and Arah with this build. I see mainly numbers around 1500, highest one was around 6800 as far as I remember. Compared to 700 – 800 and 3200 on tanky builds it is a great increase, at least for me.

O.o What’s your stats, without food/oils/stones?

You also have to take into account buffs on him (fury/might/banners) and the overall change in playstyle and weapons.

Swapping to GS and playing for damage already significantly boosts damage output.

BOXHOUND.4835:

Yaki.9563:

I think you slightly overestimate the number of tanks/healers in other games. Consider that a 25 man raid in WoW takes 2 tanks and 5 healers (28% of the raid), but there is a very long queue for DPS because of the shortage of healers.

That’s pretty worthless reasoning on guessing a tank/healer number as well though. DPS queue timers for dungeons/raids don’t directly reflect the actual number of players that like to tank and heal relative to DPS in the game, simply the number that are willing to tank/heal for a pug run. It’s pretty common accepted that the issue in lowering queue timers for DPS is less one of convincing people to roll a tank or healer but more so convcing the existing tanks and healers to queue as such despite the extra responsibility (perceived or real) compared to a DPS player in a pug.

In addition, there are so many DPS that you’re bound to find some that have the appropriate gear/experience/DPS and are the appropriate classes. For tanks/healers, you not only have to find them, but you also have to find the ones that can effectively run the dungeon/raid. You also have to find ones that want to run it and have time, which is also not much of a limiter for DPS in most traditional MMOs. This can make a small population seem even smaller.

Ynna.8769:

This is true, but in casual play other options are least usable and we have (one or two) builds that can be less than 30 Valor and still playable. From what I understand, Necromancers (to give an example) don’t even have that.

True. I rarely run 30 Valor builds; I’ve done nothing but experiment with builds every time I’ve logged in for the last 2 months or so. There are workable builds that aren’t competitive like 30 Valor, which are almost exclusively what I use. In trading raw survival, I try to pump out as much damage/control/utility as possible. However, at a certain point it gets too frustrating. Nothing like chasing an enemy with the GS who has the 25% passive movement speed and not landing a single hit because he has half the brain required to dodge WW/LoF/BB. Things like that don’t happen often, but when they do it basically shoves the reality of balance into your face. I don’t mind not having top-tier builds that match my playstyle, but simply being ineffective in situations I specifically build for (because of inherent imbalance) gets to be too much.

People will of course say “use 30 Valor with meditations and a 1h sword!” basically the other cookie cutter: 10/30/30/0/0.

1.)I prefer to not be completely ineffective in all situations I didn’t build specifically for;

2.) I prefer to not use a build that can be completely shut down by enemies who understand it;

3.)I prefer to use builds that I make and that match my playstyle.

I once considered that maybe I’m under the impression of “the grass is always greener” or some other kind of delusion, and that the problems aren’t nearly as bad as I thought. When thinking about fights I’ve had, I noticed how easily my enemies could have countered me but didn’t. Now that I’ve got another main and I’ve played on more alts, I’ve had a chance to see how easily it actually is to counter most builds, and how extremely good the few competitive builds like AH really are.

Hicci.8761:

Yes we have our own problems but those are nothing compared to rangers, engineers and necromancers.

For the sake of my sanity, I’m only going to respond to this.

At least, on my Engineer, I’ve got choice and can actually make builds that do what I want them to. Yeah their damage might not be high compared to other classes, my base survival might be lower, and there will probably be bugs, but at least I can make it work and I can definitely win by being more skilled.

The Guardian barely has those kinds of choices. Maybe it’s just a thing with Engineers, but comparatively Guardians are severely lacking in that regard.

To anyone who claims Guardians are fine and they’re super balanced in almost every way… 30 Valor =/= Guardian

I’ve said this many times before: if you like heavy support or heavy survival, then you’ll probably love the Guardian and rarely (if ever) see a problem. If you want to have build variety (viable) and have a different kind of playstyle, then you’ll see all the problems the Guardian has.

To anyone looking at the Guardian who hasn’t played one, it’s probably understandable that they think the Guardian is perfectly fine and with few issues. After all, they see a huge number of effective bunker builds in sPvP and in PvE you can use almost anything as a Guardian and seem to do well. In WvW you’ll see a lot of staff/hammer AH builds, almost the same as in sPvP.

People think being super tanky and full-on support is what the Guardian basically is. This is incorrect, it’s just that almost every viable build on the Guardian involves tankiness and support, and a large portion of Guardian players like to tank/support.

I think this is a very important thing we need to discuss. It’s clear that build diversity isn’t improving (and is clearly getting worse, especially after this patch). The primary reason for playing a game is to have fun. Being able to play how you want to, and have some way to be reasonably effective is crucial for any game. If people can’t have fun, then they’ll move on.

TheDevilWithinU.7092:

Turtle stacking has many counters. It was very big in T1/T2 for awhile until groups figured out counters.

Just gotta figure it out.

Actually, it wasn’t about players figuring out counters. It was ArenaNet removing all abilities that healed more than 5 players, like many used to. For example, the Guardians Virtue of Resolve and Empower skills used to heal infinite numbers of targets, so if you had 8 Guardians or so, you could mitigate insane amounts of damage.

With regards to stacking players now… you can’t expect to kill 50 people with few just because you’re all AoE spamming. If you only have a few people, that’s when you use siege.

Thz.7569:

I keep hearing this and it’s getting increasingly annoying. 2MB is not the same damage as whirling wrath, open your eyes. Whirling wrath is a channeled ability and its damage ramps up — the damage isn’t even close.

My eyes are open. I’ve been playing the Guardian since beta, and following since alpha. In the betas I got 160 hours and ran almost nothing but GS + Hammer. Since release, I’ve clocked about 900 hours almost always using either GS or Hammer.

Mathematically, they’re essentially the same DPS. WW is 1251 damage, Mighty Blow is 647 damage. You get 2 MBs in per 1 WW, therefore same DPS.

However, the listed damage of WW is incorrect, the actual damage is higher. In practice, 2MB = 1 WW still. Here’s why:

MB either crits or it doesn’t. Either 100% of your damage gets the multiplier, or 0%. For WW, there are 14 total hits. On average, roughly the same % of your hits will crit as you have critical chance. So if you had 50% critical chance, it’s likely only 50% of your WW damage would crit.

Therefore, even if WW was triple the damage of MB, as long as you crit both times with MB you’ll have more damage. If you only crit 1/2 of the MB, you’ll deal less damage.

The higher your critical chance, the more damage WW will do per use. That’s not the case with the Hammer, the only thing that increases is the probability of dealing full damage (and so overall DPS).

Short answer: Thieves are ridiculous.

Long answer: D/D Steal/Backstab/CnD combo is ridiculous.

Danicco.3568:

snip

This is going to sound like a weird comment, but thanks for such a well reasoned and honest post.

CRrabbit.1284:

Man, those are just CC, but not area DENIAL.

Semanitcs. What’s the goal of area denial? To keep enemies controlled. What’s the goal of CC? To keep enemies controlled. What is area denial? Control.

In what case can you not use CC when you could use “area denial”, and vice versa? And how does stacking AoEs and making enemies have to choose between death or staying put NOT count as “area denial”. How does placing chill and cripple when enemies are charging NOT count as “area denial” when you prevent them from getting closer?

To me, it seems you’re trying to make the case that preventing enemies from getting from A to B by putting a wall for 5s is on a whole new level than preventing enemies from getting from A to B by putting CC at their feet before they can get close to you, even though they accomplish the same exact thing.

Who is the best at placing wards? Guardians. Do you define area denial as wards? If so, then obviously Guardians are the best at area denial. It’s kind of like trying to emphasize the fact that Thieves are the best at stealing. Well yeah, they’re the only ones that can. But I could also just gap close and hit them like steal does, it’s just a specific name for the same concept.

Bakitten291:

I think alot of people are drawn to the class also because of the paladin/magical warrior concept. Always been a fan of those styles of character which is what drew me to the character, just like the paladin in WoW (ran ret, didnt tank/heal) And almost any dark knight class in other RPGs.

I’m in it for the magic infused melee brawler concept.

Yaki.9563:

It’s still not a healing build. Support, sure…but what Guardian build isn’t support?

I’m pretty sure most people play Guardians because they get to swing a big hammer/sword and do DPS while being loved by groups. It’s the best of both worlds. If you took away the damage and forced a real heal role or real tank role on them, most Guardians would bail and go play Warrior (which is the other “swing big weapon” alternative and equally as popular as Guardian).

Tanks and healers are scarce in other games. All of a sudden the most popular class in the healerless and tankless game is because people like to tank and heal? I think not.

When people think “support” they think healing. Like I said, a big part of it is people’s stupidity; thinking support = healing is an extension of that.

1.) Tanks/Healers make up at the very least 25% of the populations of most MMOs. If they come to GW2, what profession do you think they’ll look at first?

2.) All I did was give 3 reasons why people use AH builds. I never said how much of the Guardian population each makes up. Guardians could be 99% the third reason and 1% the other two, and I still wouldn’t be wrong.

http://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Unsteady_Ground
http://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Frozen_Ground
http://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Elemental_Surge + arcana skills
http://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Frost_Fan
http://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Static_Field_%28Lightning_Hammer_skill%29
http://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Ice_Storm from the bow or from the skill: http://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Glyph_of_Storms
http://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Tornado

In addition, Elementalists with a Staff can stack so many AoEs that you might as well have just created a wall, because enemies will choose to not run through (and they’re right to not run through in most cases).

There’s also more (mostly melee) CC in the 1hs:
http://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Frozen_Burst
http://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Frost_Aura
http://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Updraft
http://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Shocking_Aura
http://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Earthquake
http://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Churning_Earth

Of course, the auras are more for the tank builds, which end up being good CC if you’re tanky enough to take multiple hits (which a good amount of D/D ele builds tend to be).

CRrabbit.1284:

Basically just prepare for large scale fight.
1v1 roaming is not strong point for guardian. Maybe in lower tier there might be 1v1 chance, but in higher tier, you must have 1v N + super escape ability to be a roamer coz more ppl will come in any minute.

I’m on SoS (have been for a long time) and I do WvW almost exclusively. Solo doesn’t work well at all, but in small groups a Guardian can do well enough with a duelist style build.

CRrabbit.1284:

Staffx1, hammerx1, shieldx1, sancx1
Which class else has more area denial skills ??

Alarox.4590:

CRrabbit.1284:

Role Number 2: Hold the line or Push , Guardian is the only class who has many area denial skills.

You need to play more professions, badly.

Elementalist, Necromancer, and even Engineers.

Camman.2984:

But do you feel like you are useful? I often feel that sometimes I’m sitting there watching everyone take down the people on the wall while I sit there helpless.

The only way you’ll really be useful is if:

1.) You want to be support/tank in large scale fighting.

2.) You want to use a small group, 1v1 style oriented build and fight over things like supply camps.

Edit: You actually can still go for a melee high-offensive playstyle, but without a tanky build you’ll die faster than a Warrior in the front lines, and even full glass-cannon you’ll deal less damage than a Warrior, and you won’t have many options in ranged fights.

Yaki.9563:

Alarox.4590:

It’s part people being idiots, and part people knowing that most Guardians run healing/support builds.

AFKhammer isn’t a healing build. I’m not sure why people keep thinking that AH makes them some kind of group healer.

AH itself has absolutely nothing to do with benefiting allies.

However, the purpose of AH is to make yourself tanky, and to do so you have to spam boons. Using a Hammer means you’ll be spamming Retal+Protection, and you probably have Shouts, Empowering Might, and points in Virtues. Therefore, it’s a support build.

Most Guardians run this kind of a build because:

1.) They’re used to being a tank in other games.
2.) They’re used to being healers/support in other games, and 30 Valor allows them to stay tanky while still being heavy support.
3.) They’re offensive minded but recognize that 30 Valor trumps almost everything else.

CRrabbit.1284:

Role Number 2: Hold the line or Push , Guardian is the only class who has many area denial skills.

You need to play more professions, badly.

It’s part people being idiots, and part people knowing that most Guardians run healing/support builds.

Yaki.9563:

Alarox.4590:

Yaki.9563:

KensaiZen.3740:

Vitality without toughness is worthless. Choose wisely.

You couldn’t be more wrong.

Unicorns are real.

---

The more Toughness you have, the more effective your self healing abilities become, as your healing stays the same while the amount of damage you take decreases. Conversely, if you have a lot of Vitality you’ll start strong, but it doesn’t make your self healing abilities any more effective. That’s simply obvious.

And seeing as though most Guardian builds have a lot of self healing, Toughness > Vitality.

Funny, didn’t realize we were soloing.

Here’s how most fights go: you sit at near-full health, take big spikes down, get back up near full health, etc. All that toughness is worthless if you keep resetting to full health. Toughness is good when you never attain full health for an extended period of time so that the damage reduction becomes greater than the extra health gained from vitality. This is often not the case. I don’t care how “efficient” you think it is, that efficiency gets tossed out the window every time you get back to full health.

Not to mention you spat out a ridiculous hyperbole in the first place.

1.) If you keep resetting to full health, then that’s good. That’s the point. If you mitigate enough damage that you can out-heal it in a fight without getting too low, then it’s doing its job. I don’t see why vitality w/o Toughness would be better.

If we assume that 500 Vitality = 500 Toughness in terms of raw survival, then 500 Toughness works better the more healing you have (which Guardians obviously have a lot of). This is because you get to your maximum health sooner.

Ignore numbers and look at this in terms of %. Vitality and Toughness do the same thing in a different way: they decrease the % health lost from X damage. Toughness decreases the incoming damage, and Vitality increases your overall health; both have the same proportional effect.

The advantage of Vitality: condition’s % effect on health is not affected by Toughness. Meaning, Vitality is the only alternative of the two.

The advantage of Toughness: healing’s % effect on health decreases with Vitality. Meaning, Toughness is the only alternative of the two.

It is never an advantage to take longer to go back to maximum survival (full health). If you get the same proportional affect from Toughness and Vitality, then as a Guardian you want the one that allows your healing to bring you to maximum survival sooner, and that’s Toughness.

2.) You saying “you couldn’t be more wrong” to him without any reasoning or evidence is the same as me saying “unicorns are real” without any reasoning or evidence.

lenexkabol.9438:

Legacy.7360:

Easy solution for this madness. As stated before with all the help many of the classes need such as -Zeal- needing a overall(Severely now with this SW nerf), with the amount of massive community feed back on it as well. They go on and do this. I know I speak for a good majority of the community of players here… I am very concerned for the direction they are going with this game…very.

Now if this change is to stay… SW should have the same amount of Health + Armor as the caster WITH 90% passive AoE chance to miss and honestly this should play in effect for the Majority of Pets of other classes as well. It’s been proven to work on other AAA Title MMO’s… To me – It Just Makes Sense

I don’t see that ever happening. You want a pet that can have 20k + hps and 3k + armor. with 90% chance to dodge aoe damage. On top of that you could have it perma -30% damage from boons heal it and buff it to hell. Gaurdian’s can be hard enough to take down. Having two pets that are just as buff as the Gaurdian attack while they just kite/heal/evade is a bit much.

Imagine a guard with the right traits triggering all his virtues. He hits you once pets agro and your sitting in no less then 15 seconds of burn damage plus the 1 second per hit of each weapon. On top of that the guard and his pets have block and regen up. He uses his elite to become immune to damage and reset his virtues and then does it again. And there is not point in going after the pets because they are freaken harder to kill the then guard lol.

It just looks like they made the change but did not check if the hps and armor scaled with level because damage already should. Some one else posted that at low levels they are pretty tanky. If that is the case it should be a easy fix. But I don’t think spirit weapons should be stronger then every other pet or summon out there.

I don’t think you understand.

Spirit Weapons have niche usefulness, and a build for them takes dedication via traits and sacrificing very good utilities. In traiting for them, you sacrifice a lot of vital traits as well.

Before the patch, they were barely viable (and even then, very situational). What the poster suggested is actually worse than before the patch, but better than now.

You claiming that his suggestion makes them OP is essentially claiming that Spirit Weapons were OP before the patch.

Bakitten291:

snip

I actually love the Torch, but I also think skill 5 is really unbalanced because of the low damage output (less than the auto-attack). Can you honestly tell me you would rather have Torch 5 over Whirling Wrath if you could pick one or the other (excluding all other variables)?

I just want the Guardian to have real balance, even internally.

EDIT: I’m off-topic. Let’s redirect the conversation back to the sword.

Bakitten291:

A) you are never getting 14 hits unless your lucky.
B) torch 4 can crit for just as much damage as a full WW at 1200 range.
C) think the guy meant torch 5, but you also get the added effect of cleansing allies, and more hits = more procs of on crit attacks.

A) The damage listed is actually only for 9 hits, so to reach that level of damage you don’t even need to hit with all. It’s easy to get most of the hits.

B) No it can’t, unless you have a low critical chance and thus deal little damage with WW, and then get a lucky crit with torch 4.

C) Torch 5 is nothing compared to WW for damage, as I’ve already shown, and taking into account on-crit effects WW benefits more. WW lasts basically 1s, torch 5 lasts 3s. However, they both hit about the same amount of times. Meaning, you can pop WW then hop back to auto attack or other skills, while Torch 5 keeps you locked for 3s, meaning you’ll still get more hits with the GS.

Obtena.7952:

Torch #4 is better than the GS AOE: it doesn’t miss and it’s not limited to a certain number of hits.

I literally laughed.

Whirling Wrath:
1251+ damage (actual damage is significantly higher http://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Whirling_Wrath)
1668 DPS
8-10s cooldown
360 degrees
14 total hits

Cleansing Flame:
1000 damage
235 DPS
12.75-15s cooldown
Frontal cone
10 total hits

Whirling Wrath is significantly better.

Obtena.7952:

I really question if the GS damage is better too: if it is, it’s not by much and certainly nothing noticeable for PVE stuff.

Sword Auto: (269+269+504)/1.5=694DPS
GS Auto: (269+269+443)/1.5=654DPS

Whirling Wrath: 1668 DPS
Zealot’s Defense: 888/3= 296 DPS

Leap of Faith: 406/.5= 812 DPS
Symbol of Wrath: 925/.25 = 3700 DPS (this is formated for the following map, the DPS here is relative to the cast time)

Sword DPS over 1m: 694 (mathematically, it’s actually worse DPS wise to use anything but ‘1’ spam)

GS DPS over 1m: Assuming 6 WW casts, 3 SoW casts, 4 LoF casts, and the rest auto-spam, the math is:

Time: (6*.75)(3*.25)(4*.75) = 8.25s, so 52s for auto spam.

Damage: [(1668*4.5)(3700*.75)(3*812)+(654*52)]/60=

(2775+7506+2436+34008)/60=779 DPS

But also, the above DPS can easily hit 3 enemies, and most of it 5 enemies. It’s also using the lower DPS of WW rather than the real.

Yaki.9563:

KensaiZen.3740:

Vitality without toughness is worthless. Choose wisely.

You couldn’t be more wrong.

Unicorns are real.

The more Toughness you have, the more effective your self healing abilities become, as your healing stays the same while the amount of damage you take decreases. Conversely, if you have a lot of Vitality you’ll start strong, but it doesn’t make your self healing abilities any more effective. That’s simply obvious.

And seeing as though most Guardian builds have a lot of self healing, Toughness > Vitality.

The way to fix the Guardian’s issues is not to spread AH. The way to fix the Guardian’s issues is to give us more viable options other than AH/MF. Other than that, I agree with most of what you said.

Quarktastic.1027:

Lets be honest here. The only spirit weapon that was ever worth using, even fully traited, was the shield.

Now it seems even the shield is completely useless. Have fun in your high level fractals people.

Actually, the Sword has always been very good for burning builds, and the Hammer has always been a good CC option for PvP. Not anymore of course.

With PVT you won’t hit hard. With 0/0/30/20/20 you won’t hit hard either unless you have a lot of precision. You’ll be a sponge though, but that’s it.

If you want a balanced build then go Pow/Pre/Tuf and 0/15/30/20/5.

Yaki.9563:

Hmm, guardian is one of the best classes in the game and certainly one of the two most played. Yet you make it sound like they are the worst class.

BTW, they fixed some important traits people will actually use (well, maybe once AH gets nerfed…).

Every former tank/healer in any game is probably interested in the Guardian when they come over, and it just so happens that the best build (and one of the few good ones) is all about tank/support.

If you’re satisfied with 1 build (which people of tank/healer origins seem to be) then the Guardian will seem 100% perfect to you. If you want to have any kind of originality or if you want to do something other than be a damage sponge and buff allies, then the Guardian is filled with problems and is sub-par. (By ‘you’ I don’t actually mean you")

Darcy.2079:

Arken.3725:

We can’t heal our very limited SW

SWs act as allies – we can heal them and give them boons.

I’ve never seen that happen before.

Modimor.4319:

Lol, always complaints about stealth classes in MMO’s

There’s a pattern.

As far as I’m concerned, any complaints against “zerging” are essentially complaints about reality. It’s complaining that it’s easier to do something with 3 people instead of 2. It’s like complaining that gravity exists when you get caught in a rainstorm without an umbrella. It’s reality: when you have more people, you can generally get something done easier.

That being said, the kinds of things you said above, I like.

Silver.8023:

snip

Regarding engineers, my build has almost perma-cripple/chill.

roamzero.9486:

Knowing Anet they’ll probably give SW’s a +50% HP boost in the next patch, but they’ll still suck and die easily regardless. I was thinking about gearing a SW build too, at least I wont be wasting 20g now.

Pretty much. Nerf into oblivion. Slight buff, “working as intended”. Rinse, repeat.

Zenonium.6852:

NOOOOO they can’t nerf my gaurdian! If they nerf it then bye bye GW2, hello Elder Scrolls Online! :P

https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/professions/guardian/Spirit-Weapons-RIP/first#post1309945

Say hello.

Ganzo.5079:

correction: 2 of them are utility. My bad

Yeah, but one of them is on a 20s cooldown and stays at a distance, and the other one’s purpose is to absorb damage.

Ganzo.5079:

I dont know if they just want all the guardians only player go to another game.

I dont use Spirit weapons very often, but im kinda sick of nerfs without adress the major issues.

30 Valor or quit; ArenaNet ultimatum to Guardians.

Jusanden.3897:

Just playing devil’s advocate here. I’m guessing the rational behind the spirit weapon nerfs is that it brings them in line with every single other summon in the game. The most similar being mesmer phantasms. Essentially, spirit weapons were “free” effects that the opponent couldnt really counter. Shield shuts down all ranged opposition, hammer is constant interruption, bow is constant cleansing. Unlike the mesmer phantasm versions, like phantasmal warden, and phantasmal disenchanter, they could not be stopped from doing their jobs, and thus the nerf simply brought them in line. Though now… something about that insane cd probably has to be reduced. Maybe 40 seconds instead of 60 for most SW.

You can’t really compare phantasms to spirit weapons, as phantasms are balanced around only being out for a few seconds, while spirit weapons have only ever been effective if they are around for a long duration. The spirit sword is now basically a 30s cooldown skill that deals a fraction of your auto-attack dps for a few seconds, then dies.

Just tested this. The spirit weapons barely have any health whatsoever. The Mesmer PvP npc in the Heart of the Mists literally 3-shot my spirit hammer with auto attacks.

Arken.3725:

This, I believe, is the first patch where we didn’t get hammered into the ground.(spirit weapon pun intended) But the big issue is now we’re really pigeonholed into AH/MF spec since now SW are now less viable.

More than less viable.

This is asinine

I just got in and tested the spirit weapons. The PvP NPC in the Heart of the Mists just 3 shot my spirit hammer.

Bakitten291:

snip

I don’t see how you can say ZD is even comparable to Whirling Wrath.

WW:
AoE
Lets you move at a reduced speed
8-10s cooldown
*More than 1251 damage (actual damage is higher than listed, as the listed number is 9 hits, not 14 like it actually does).

ZD:
Single target
Immobilizes you
15s cooldown
888 damage

Zealot’s Defense: 888 damage over 3s.
Sword Auto: 269+269+504 damage over 1.5s.
Whirling Wrath: 1251 over .75s.

Zealot’s Defense: 296 DPS
Sword Auto: 505 DPS
Whirling Wrath: 1668 DPS

Kami.7369:

Sword Wave and Battle Presence being fixed are huge for me.

Yeah, the Sword Wave fix is very good.

I would love the Sword and probably use it almost exclusively, if it weren’t for such low AoE damage and how the playstyle is essentially “spam 1”.

All they need is to rework Zealot’s Defense and add more damage to Flashing Blade.

I would love to see Zealot’s Defense become a skill that throws out projectiles horizontally and carries the projectile barrier in front of you, as you move. As it is now, it’s a medium-high damage, easy to avoid attack that requires CC to set up and is on a long cooldown. It’s essentially 100b with twice the cooldown, less than half the damage, and is single target.

It’s actually better to spam ‘1’ in most cases than it is to use Zealot’s Defense, because if you don’t connect with every projectile you would have done more damage with the auto-attack. Using this skill also puts you out of melee range.