Guild Wars 2

Spirit weapons are now susceptible to attacks… we’ll see.

Edit: I Saw

Alarox.4590:

This is asinine

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

ErraticFaith.9142:

Fortunately interpretation is individual, what I ment and what you think I ment, not really that important to me.

Guardians dont have too little offence for their defence lol, because of that they shouldnt have warrior control. If they did it would be OP.

Why change guardians role indeed. Just use your brain and role something thats orientated to work well for that role, instead of expecting godmode from a support class.

Actually, Honor/Valor =/= Guardian. Guardians are not a support class. Guardians are not a tank class. Guardians are a class where currently, only one part of the class is balanced: tank/support.

The Zeal/Radiance lines, the Greatsword/Scepter/Sword/Torch are part of the Guardian profession. They are all offense oriented, not defense and support. “Just use your brain”.

The Guardian is a class that has a base amount of support/defense no matter how you build it. Just as the Warrior is a class that has a base amount of burst damage no matter how you build. However, that doesn’t mean the only role of the class is that base amount of X. All it means is that it’s easier to hybrid that base, with whatever you want.

The problem with the Guardian is that you don’t gain much offensive/control capability if you don’t go deep into tank/support. “Just use your brain”.

ErraticFaith.9142:

Ofcourse its a justification lol. Guardians are not warriors and Anet, just as they did in the beginning will be the first to tell you that class philosophy will stay for as long as they can maintain it.

Almost all the QQ comes from rerolled guardians who want the power of all classes in their new fotm. Yet that will just bring a nerfhammer so large you’ll be left as useless as your average engineer.

Most of the abilities guardian lacks, it lacks for good reason. People are too narrow minded. If you give a class like guardian warrior controls and equivalent tools, with his ability to cover distance with IJ, shrug of damage with aegis x2 and pull, ward and control enemies guardian will be so ridiculous that warriors wont even be seen in game anymore.

Its my belief warrior is the one who needs more diversity outside of 100b and eviscerate. As well as alot more options and less gimmicks. Guardian is in a good place right now, if anything i’d see his ranged complement increased purely because those weapons are useless nearly regardless of use.

Still, people need to stop helping the homogenization of the game. Diversity should be maintained.

Summary:

1.) If you aren’t satisfied with tank/support and little offensive abilities, then you must have rerolled from an OP class.

2.) Guardian with Warrior level control is apparently OP because we have Judge’s Intervention and the ability to use Aegis twice, and a Hammer ward on a 40s cooldown.

3.) If you want Guardians to be effective at offensive melee via CC abilities, you’re actually just narrow minded and want the game homogenized.

Arken.3725:

Every Guardian runs 30 Valor, It’s our best tree by far. I would trade both Zeal and Radiance before I traded Valor. This is how good the line is.

I know it is, and that’s my point. If you’re satisfied with 30 Valor with a tank/support build being what the Guardian is, then these kinds of threads aren’t for you. An AH build is already very effective; adding suggestions relative to snaring/gap closer on that would simply be overpowered, and only reinforce one build: 30 Valor.

Start fixing the Guardian to make more than 1-2 tank/support builds viable and allow different playstyles to be competitive.

tanshiniza.8629:

I agree that Guardians are missing out on some serious CC compared to literally any other class but in all honestly I haven’t really missed it. The easiest class for me to kill is the warrior since they have to stay in melee range to deal most of their damage which suits me as a Guardian just fine.

Do you run a classic tank/support build with 30 Valor? If so, then your playstyle has nothing to do with this thread, as tank/support players of the Guardian are perfectly satisfied the way things are.

Heinel.6548:

snip

Pretty much.

This description is essentially telling us things about the Guardian that aren’t even substantial or unique, and are often only accurate for certain builds.

No significant RNG please. That works in other MMOs just fine as core mechanics, in GW2 it’s more of a hindrance, especially when its something you have to rely on.

Some suggestions:

Wrathful Spirits-
Increases spirit weapon damage by 10%
Increase spirit weapon damage by 10% and spirit weapon commands Cripple foes for 3s.

Scepter Power-
Scepter damage is increased by 5%.
Scepter damage is increased by 5% and Smite also inflicts 2s Cripple.

Powerful Blades-
Sword and Spear damage is increased by 5%.
Sword and Spear damage is increased by 5%, and Flashing Blade and Brilliance also inflict 2s cripple.

Mace of Justice-
Mace damage is increased by 5%.
Mace damage is increased by 5% and Symbol of Faith pulses have 50% chance to inflict 1s Cripple.

Greatsword Power-
Greatsword damage is increased by 5%.
Greatsword damage is increased by 5% and Whirling Wrath projectiles have a 50% chance to inflict 1s Cripple.

PvE DPS: Hammer
PvP DPS: Greatsword
Damage Consistency: Greatsword

gamefreak.5673:

You have a leap, teleport to foes, near 100% upkeep of swiftness with little work. Also you forgot necros on your list for signets with runspeed.

edit: Fun little thing you can/could do is use your leap off great sword + the teleport to target to cover a nice chunk of ground quickly, it was alittle tricky to get the timing rught. The names escape me but it used to be a great way to surprise another player to see my guard cover close to a 1500 gap quickly.

He’s talking about passive movement speed, not Swiftness and gap closers.

irrimn.3192:

TheKillerAngel.3596:

A better idea might be the ability to transfer XP from one character to another. There are lots of ways of doing this, but one might be equipping a special item that when activated, “absorbs” any experienced gained. This item can then be transferred and consumed to gain the amount of stored XP.

This is a “feature” in a LOT of Pay-to-win MMOs and it only imbalances the game because then paying players can “instantly” level a character from 1-80.

I highly suggest Anet NEVER introduces Exp Orbs or anything similar or equivalent.

Define imbalance. Convenience =/= imbalance.

Kitten. Plateau means to eventually become stable. Flat = stable.

They said the Time/Level will eventually plateau. This is true. At low levels you level quickly. At higher levels it takes longer, but level-to-level the average time is about the same.

Greiger.7092:

And as a side note to the OP I was always terrible at math, seriously.

Fixed.

The point of titles is an additional reward for doing something skillfully and for so long, or for an additional incentive to keep doing what you’re doing, and then some.
These titles are unobtainable by anyone.

Either ArenaNet is batkitten crazy, or they put the current amounts as filler.

The Guardian is currently a profession where, if you happen to like the current playstyles it caters to, you’ll absolutely love it and see no problems. If you don’t want to settle for tank/support with 0/0/30/20/20 variants, then you’ll become frustrated and see all of the flaws, because you’ll look deeper than an AH/30-Valor support/bunker build.

The Warrior has the same problem. If you’re not into burst and dedicated to damage, then you’ll become frustrated.

This is why you’ll see people in both who think Warrior/Guardians are nearly perfect and are must play classes. This is because the majority of Warriors played them for the massive damage and the majority of Guardians played them for the tankiness and the support they’re used to from other games.

Pro Tip: there’s a wiki.

http://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Whirling_Wrath

/thread

Ganzo.5079:

Personal taste, but on this build i prefer to exchange right handed STR, for blind exposure or searing flame.

That’s losing a lot of potential damage. You already have the +30% critical damage so more Precision makes good use of that. Having +15% critical chance is like having +315 Precision; taking this trait means you wont have to gear for Precision.

^ Yeah, its all about what you’re willing to sacrifice and what you want to play as. I figure most current Guardians won’t want it, as 30 Valor is too appealing, but its still another option (which you can never have too much of).

It’s one of the two main viable build set-ups. One is commonly 0/0/30/20/20 bunker/support, and this one is commonly the way your link is: Monk’s Focus and 1h Mastery for an ideal dueling build.

It’s viable yeah, but you’ll struggle in AoE fights. You’ll excel in 1v1 battles. Your survival will be pretty good, but your support will be little to none whatsoever.

Note: I would definitely swap Contemplation of Purity out for Judge’s Intervention.

Strange. I use Renewed Justice on every Guardian build and it works fine for me, and I’ve tested Defender’s Flame.

Lightrayne.7829:

Stand your ground is a staple in most guardian builds, and I use it right before a crucial tome moment for the stability. While it doesn’t last the full 20 seconds, you can at least still fire off the important skills.

I’m not sure if I’d want the cooldown to be any shorter on the tomes. If anything, maybe the duration should be longer or the skills need to be a bit more powerful. Tomes, like several other abilities, lock you out of your basic abilities, and that’s not something that I would want to be spammable. If it has a long cooldown time, its effects should be worth the wait (i.e. time warp’s 10s quickness).

I was thinking 120-150s rather than 180.

Renewed Focus used to immobilize you, and both Tomes used to grant Stability for the entire duration.

Just a heads up since not everyone has been playing a Guardian since launch.

Ganzo.5079:

Alarox.4590:

Chill/cripple/swiftness itself added does not make the Guardian OP. In fact, it balances them as currently there are few options for an offensive melee Guardian.

However, in conjunction with the current meta bunker builds, a trait like this would surely be overpowered. But, I think a few more inherent cripples/chills/swiftness on utility or weapon skills would not make bunker Guardians overpowered.

(Although, most weapon skills are balanced without cripple/chill, so it would have to be very carefully done, and probably best left to utility skills and traits).

TL;DR: More chills/cripples/swiftness is fine to give all Guardians, as long as its balanced. This trait specifically, would be OP with the current bunker builds, which is why it needs to be a Grandmaster.

Thats why i think that Simbols\consecrations must be touched i bit to provide some sort of snaring.
And im pointing Simbols and consecrations just to distinguish guardian from the other main melee classes.

Warriors and thief have enough tools to reach\snare the enemy, their combat stile is very mobile.

Guardian arent mobile, so they have to keep the enemy on the same area for much time as possible, and effect like simbols and consecration can help for this(if tweaked).
But i have to say that i dont care if they dont use simbols for snare, but i know that our class need them for every weapon (except hammer… maybe)

I was thinking more area control as well, rather than the single target that Warriors/Thieves use. Like making Purging Flames cripple/chill or making Spirit Weapon commands cripple/chill.

Regarding weapon skills… there’s a line between balanced and overpowered that can easily be crossed for a lot of weapon skills if they received cripple/chill.

storm.8042:

I love our elite skills too. They’re ok. Since you’re able to move with renewed focus, you can support your group/other players very well. Also the tomes are nice. I don’t get all the people, who call out for “overpowering elite skill” – it’s a bit pathetic, imho. Read, learn and play the skills you have. If you want stability for the 5th tome skill, then use hallowed ground. I’d say that these three elite skills are enough powerful for the guardian, who already is a powerful friend/enemy, hrhr

1.) The Tomes are very niche and have very long cooldowns relative to how effective they really are. Yes they are good in their niche, but outside of that they are lacking meaning most people use Renewed Focus which, while effective, feels more like a utility skill than an elite.

Its nothing really “gamechanging” like Tornado or Time Warp, or even Battle Standard.

2.) Your suggestion for having to use Hallowed Ground (80s cooldown, lasts 1/2 duration of a Tome, and forces you to stay in a small ring) is just silly.

Chill/cripple/swiftness itself added does not make the Guardian OP. In fact, it balances them as currently there are few options for an offensive melee Guardian.

However, in conjunction with the current meta bunker builds, a trait like this would surely be overpowered. But, I think a few more inherent cripples/chills/swiftness on utility or weapon skills would not make bunker Guardians overpowered.

(Although, most weapon skills are balanced without cripple/chill, so it would have to be very carefully done, and probably best left to utility skills and traits).

TL;DR: More chills/cripples/swiftness is fine to give all Guardians, as long as its balanced. This trait specifically, would be OP with the current bunker builds, which is why it needs to be a Grandmaster.

Silver.8023:

You said, " the only change sought is more option on par with existing viable builds" whereas the OP said, “It’s simply another option that adds a number of new and viable builds where there weren’t any before.”

Which is really what I’m suggesting as well.

They’re not mutually exclusive ideas though. I think we all want the same thing: more options for offensive/control oriented Guardians as currently we only have competitive bunker/support.

Let me try to redirect the conversation. Suggested ideas so far are:

1.) My idea for a Zeal Grandmaster involving symbols inflicting 1s chill
2.) Improved Signets
3.) Chill/Cripple on weapon skills and utility skills
5.) Swiftness on more weapon skills and utility skills

Let’s elaborate on more of these and make this a productive conversation.

ErraticFaith.9142:

Alarox.4590:

The argument was that being able to swap to Tome of Courage and guarantee a full heal (because of stability) was overpowered.

I haven’t personally seen the full heal pulled off effectively in such a long time now :/

Yeah, it was originally made with the intention of Stability allowing it, so now its underpowered. I guess its easier to notice overpowered skills than it is to notice underpowered ones.

Heinel.6548:

I still don’t think people who say guardian needs snares with no drawbacks at all are giving the guardian class enough credits.

The only other build that can keep persistent chill is the D/D ele, and even for them it’s not 100% up time. Have you ever seen how fast a D/D ele drops when they cannot maintain kiting range? An Honor/Valor variant guardian just plain does not drop that fast. It’s actually very difficult to counter bunker guardians when matters come to a toe to toe fight.

Most people have gotten so used to the survival builds that they think it is the baseline to build guardians upon. Guardians do have ways to lock down their targets, very strong ones, at that, but making a signet build means you miss out on the builds that make you nigh unkillable. You can choose to kill, or be unkillable, but not both. This is part of the guardian’s design.

This, exactly.

You can’t, and shouldn’t have everything. Most Guardians run 30 Valor with either Monk’s Focus or Altruistic Healing, and already have a huge amount of survival and support. The problem with the Guardian is that you gain almost nothing in NOT going 30 Valor with a tanky/support build.

Most people seem fine with that; this suggestion helps only those who aren’t.

I agree that Guardians overall need more ways of staying in melee and controlling their enemies, but this suggestion is not the ultimate solution to that. It’s simply another option that adds a number of new and viable builds where there weren’t any before, and caters to a playstyle other than tank/support.

Long-time Guardian player here since beta.

Altruistic Healing is NOT support. It is NOT altruistic either. AH heals you every time you grant a boon to allies. AH is the key component to tanky builds. The reason why AH is considered support is because, for it to be effective, you have to grant boons to allies.

Because of this built-in synergy of tankiness and support, most Guardians sacrifice damage and go 0/0/30/20/20 or 0/0/30/30/10. The first 30 gets you the grandmaster trait Altruistic Healing and +300 Toughness. The second 20-30 allows you to buff your Shouts and gain healing abilities. The last 10-20 gives more buffing and focuses on your Virtues.

If you run an AH build, the three weapons you’ll focus on will be Hammer, Staff, and Mace. The Hammer is a very balanced weapon, but can dish out a lot of AoE Protection and Retaliation. The Staff is basically a utility weapon that can support. The Mace is your generic tank weapon.

If you wanted to focus on 1h weapons (which are more damage/dueling based) you would want to look at 30 Radiance as there is a trait for +15% increased critical chance.

If you don’t want to be buff-centric but want survival, then 30 Valor and the grandmaster Monk’s Focus will be good. This trait heals you (significantly) every time you use a Meditation utility skill.

The Zeal line is generally useless compared to the other lines, unless you happen to want a particular 1st tier Major trait.

There are a bunch of trait combinations out there you’ll eventually learn by messing with your builds.

BTW if you want maximum damage, use the Greatsword.

Both Tomes used to grant stability for the entire duration (unless it was stripped), but people complained heavily about Tome of Courage for tPvP and so both were nerfed.

The argument was that being able to swap to Tome of Courage and guarantee a full heal (because of stability) was overpowered.

Bump – saw discussion of a trait like this in another thread about Smite being a symbol; we have a thread here already.

Advent.6193:

1. Yes
2. Who says it can’t be done? Altruistic Healing Bunker-Guards are effectively Clerics :P
3. We shall see. Game’s still relatively young.

Altruistic Healing has absolutely nothing to do with healing anyone but yourself.

Just add PvE/WvW Knight’s so people can choose something other than Bunker and Glass Cannon. Want to go balance? Pow/Pre/Vit and get wrecked. That might be good for some builds, but Pow/Pre/Tuf allows so many more builds that you see in WvW/PvE that people would like to use, but can’t for no reason. You wonder why more people don’t play sPvP? Silly things like this.

So what are the main choices now? Pow/Pre/Crit for damage and Pow/Vit/Tuf for bunker. Why use Pow/Pre/Vit for damage when you’ll get shredded from no Toughness anyway? Might as well go full glass with Pow/Pre/Crit and try to burst before you’re hit. So now you have everyone going burst, and your only balanced damage build is Pow/Pre/Vit which will get destroyed by burst builds. You can die instantly with Pow/Pre/Vit, or survive a while with Pow/Tuf/Vit and deal little damage, but at least you don’t drop dead.

People wonder why its all burst/bunker when the only choices you give are burst/bunker (minus some condition/support specs).

I like it because it is complicated and lets me fight in very unorthodox ways. Most Professions are pretty straight forward and boring, Engineer is the exact opposite.

Doomcaster.5084:

DPS with a gs is pretty good fron what I’ve seen…

It’s the best DPS you can get with a Guardian yeah. In PvE you’ll be fine no matter how you play a Guardian, but using the GS for PvE you’ll do really well. PvP is different though.

Doomcaster.5084:

so Mace+focus is more tanky?

Yeah. The way tanky builds work is from 30 Valor and Altruistic Healing, making every boon you grant heal you. Mace has a block, healing, and constant Regeneration (so you get healed two times over when you grant this boon from Altrustic Healing.) The Focus gives a chain 3-block which allows you ignore any big burst, and it has an AoE Blind and Regen.

foofad.5162:

It’s not overpowered. If you spec like that you’re a one trick pony. I have an 80 thief and an 80 guardian, I should know.

Apparently you don’t, because that’s not a 1-trick pony. To use that combo, all you need is D/D and damage gear, and you still maintain Stealth (which is the ultimate defense). By comparison, for their optimal burst a Warrior sacrifices 2 Utilities, an Elite, 2 weapon slots, and full damage gear, and really does become a 1-trick pony. If you block a Warrior’s burst, then they become easy prey. You block a Thief’s initial burst? They can still stay in the fight and win, or run without any fear. Hello stealth and initiative.

BTW we all have lv80 Thieves and Guardians, which means we also don’t need to provide an argument or any evidence to back up what we say.

You people have no idea what you’re talking about. This combo is a 3-shot from stealth from 900 away. Meaning, to be able to counter this, you need to know there is a Thief far away from you who is stealthed (meaning you’re asking everyone to be psychic), or get lucky.

I don’t know about you, but I’m not a paranoid player who constantly spams dodges and Protection when there’s 0 reason to believe there’s a Thief, and that’s what you’re telling everyone to do. “L2p, just spam dodge and all your Protection cooldowns for no reason in any PvP situation you ever find yourself, because there might possibly be a chance a Thief is near you.”

Most of the Guardian community is tank/support based, so they’ll tell you to tank/support.

For the most part that is what the Guardian is made to do. You have options for damage, but they’re limited and not as effective as other Professions. The current balance for the Guardian is about bunker builds, mainly 0/0/30/20/20, and ArenaNet seems fine with almost every Guardian going tank/support.

BTW: Shield isn’t a tanky weapon, the tanky off-hand is the Focus.

The Scepter isn’t useless by any means, but it certainly is the worst 1200 range weapon.

Note: They’re not talking about skills that hit more than 1 person, like cleave attacks or projectiles, they’re talking about ground AoE that covers an area.

I don’t see how Grenades could need nerfed. If they need another damage reduction, then they must have been ungodly powerful a month ago (they weren’t). Grenades have a rather large delay between throw and hit, are skill shots, and require a grandmaster to be truly powerful.

Bombs deal a lot of damage, but are balanced because they’re melee range and have an attack delay, meaning their use is limited to melee range defensive.

Flamethrower is already low on damage. Their criteria is for skills that are too powerful in comparison to single target attacks. In addition, it’s not a ground based AoE attack.

Chaba.5410:

They must have finally realized that it wasn’t the engineer grenades that were the problem, but AoE in general. Which means they are going to nerf AoE and unnerf the grenades, right, right?

They’ll double down on nerfing Grenades. They already forgot they nerfed them.

Specterryu Quipter.8412:

I saw a post somewhere, talking about what ANET could have done instead, and I think it is a great idea. Have each boon activate at a certain percentage. What do I mean? An example would be to have Swiftness at 75%+ health, Protection at 25%-0% health, and Regen 25%+-75%.

Oh, stop it you.

GoZero.9708:

It’s okay. I already stopped playing Engineer for the vastly superior Guardian. I just feel bad for our Elementalist friends.

I stopped playing my Guardian for the Engineer. At least on the Engineer you have a lot of choice and crazy things to do, the Guardian is linear and you’re limited in build choice. Granted, the two base builds you can choice from are effective, but it doesn’t make them fun or (IMO) make up for the lost personal choice.

Only an Engineer would use a wrench as a boomerang.

Only an Engineer would spray his allies with poisonous fumes to cure poison.

Only an Engineer would cure an immobilize with a knockdown.

Say goodbye to the Bomb Kit.

Thenoob.1480:

Sporadicus.1028:

If you Toss Elixir S and you get stealth, then people can’t target you. Stealth helps in that it breaks target and prevents further targeted damage until the end of the duration.

If you Toss Elixir S and you get Stability, people can’t CC you. No CC means that you can move to your heart’s content.

Stealth does not break target exactly, it will mostly work if you have mobility and get away from their cone of auto attack, I know because I both kill, and have been killed with stealth.
Stability, sure you can’t be cc’d but you’ll still just die, we’re a very squishy class unless you build for it.

Stealth literally breaks target.

Rifle/Toolkit static discharge burst, dancing across all ranges.

Bargaw.4832:

we are fine l2p;)

Your post would hold the same merit if we were talking about countering a profession that could insta-kill everyone on the map since “l2p” would mean logging out. It would hold the same merit if we were talking about a problem with a profession that dealt 10000 damage to himself every time he used a skill, and healed enemies for an equal amount, since “l2p” would mean stand there and do nothing.

What are you talking about?

The thread quickly turned into a collaborative way of coming up with reasons that adding more PvE would improve WvW, instead of having the reasons first and then concluding to add more.

Basically, coming up with excuses to add something that doesn’t need to be there because you think it might be cool for a little bit. Dragons are cool, but there’s no need for them in WvW. And yet, the first page turns into a discussion to come up with reasons for a dragon.

WvW is great because of the PvP. The reason people are still playing each night is because of how much fun it is fighting against other players in a week-long war over three huge maps. The people who will keep playing WvW for a long time to come are the people who love the PvP. The dedicated players are dedicated to the PvP.

And yet, you want to put the focus more on PvE when PvP is the reason why WvW is still going strong? Sure, you might attract some PvE players for the PvE fights, and PvX players might it enjoy it for a while, but what does it add to the core of WvW? Nothing, and the thread is essentially a big attempt to rationalize the desire to fight big dragons in spite of what WvW really is: PvP.

Nuzt.7894:

I like what he had to say as well, he also did mention they were fixing many ongoing issues. I guess the OP need them to list every single exploit, or glitch and say yes we are going to fix this. Could you imagine, “yes we are aware of people glitching into X tower, we plan to fix this”, “yes we are aware of people glitching into Y tower, yes we plan to fix this”, “yes we are aware of ……” It would rediculous to expect them to mention every little detail and explain they plan on fixing it.

I think this is a great start on bettering Wv3 for everyone, the rest of the fixing things issues is just common sence that should not need to be pointed out.

There are people that openly exploit, post videos of exploiting, admit to exploiting, and encourage others to exploit, and said exploits are still not fixed and the people exploiting still are not banned. Look at Wildbill. He was caught exploiting all the time against SoS in getting into keeps/towers, his own videos taken and he fully admits to doing it, and he gets banned on the forums for admitting to exploit. Still not banned for keep/tower exploiting though, just admitting to it.

Nuzt.7894:

Um … Public Forum, you started the thread, you do not own it. People disagree, if you don’t like people disagreeing or putting forth their opinion, you probably shouldn’t start threads.

Point out where he said he doesn’t like people putting forth their opinions. All he did was comment on the insulting additude the other poster responded to him with.

As for ownership of a thread, yes he does own it in the sense that he’s the author, which is the only kind of ownership he referenced. He could say “my threads” or “threads that I start”, it’s semantics you’re arguing over there. .

Warriors, Mesmers, and Guardians should also all have easy access to personal 100% Swiftness like the Engineer, or 25% passive movement like the rest of the Professions.