Guild Wars 2

Black Box.9312:

10% is pathetic for a grandmaster major trait. It needs to be at least 15%.

Still wouldn’t touch it at 15%(needs to be 20). Hell, even if this was 20% I probably wouldn’t use it due to how difficult it is to make a symbol build in spvp(You’d need Zeal, honor, valor).

Ah thank you, sorry I missed your thread.

Just found out about this weird bug that utilizes Stalwart defender. Check it.

http://i.imgur.com/lARsbOX.jpg As you can see from the tooltip I don’t have Stalwart defender slotted and the damage from sword.

http://i.imgur.com/glL8rqB.jpg After slotting in Stalwart defender and swapping to another set and then BACK to sword again, the dmg is boosted across all 3 skills(only showed auto here)

http://i.imgur.com/y5h0PHG.jpg. This is attributed to a power/crit chance and Toughness boost given when Stalwart Defender is active. Look at my power value using Marauder with no might-stacks. This shouldn’t be possible.

Fix the stacking and please revert it to 20%. Symbol builds in spvp are incredibly difficult to pull off making this very undesirable in its current state.

I say they fix the issue and revert the change back to 20% (since symbol builds are useless in spvp).

ronpierce.2760:

Supreme.3164:

32: Minions CD starts from the moment of death ( like ele summons )

Good thing they listened to you in GW2 beta because you know… That’s how it has been forever.

Booyah. Mr. Pierce for the uppercut.

I like you, 15chars

The nerf to MotP was completely unjustifiable since you never saw Guardian’s stack 25 in comparison to Ele’s/War’s and even with that, i’d still never take Litany.

Their approach to make Litany more appealing by nerfing the crap out of something that wasn’t strong to begin with baffles my mind.

Bash.7291:

So we arent considering the whole 4 stacks of might vs 25 stacks in a zerg setting a nerf in regards to shelter? I feel like that is an understatement.

Edited it for you.

ellesee.8297:

Please change this amulet to 1200 power 900 precision 900 condition damage so it’s not so useless!

Wahoo! Bye frands!

I would like this but us Low-tier health classes won’t be able to use it 8(

Solid players, definitely should consider these guys.

@Rocksteady, there was no balanced matchup. I can’t counter stealth but only play the guessing game. It’s even more apparent when Warlord is running PU. Like I said, before the patch when we dueled, the damage wasn’t nearly as high with full burst.

Chobiko.9182:

First off: Why isn’t the mesmer using harmonious mantras with mantra of recovery? Second: Why go chaos when you can go inspiration and have so much heals from shatters? With Dom/Duel/Insp you are literally a walking tank with high burst.

He switched to Inspiration at the end and completely nullified my condition dmg.

Interesting this whole discussion is about Mesmers and not the Guardian’s ability to output Burn damage. Maybe just 1 condition really isn’t as bad as many people may believe.

@ResJudicator: Rylock and myself used to duel A LOT before the patch and it was always back and forth while he ran the same exact build(Not the same since the new traits but interrupt non-the-less) and even when I got stunned and took damage from a full burst, the damage wasn’t nearly as high. After the patch, I barely stand a chance(and no chance if it’s the PU version)

I can mostly agree with Drake’s breath due to it’s incredibly low cd, not so much the rest.

ResJudicator.7916:

I think the real takeaway re: mesmer is that the 15% phantasm damage boost was totally unwarranted.

When Rytlock used mirrorblade + mindstab + mind wrack + power block, the damage wasn’t over the top for a burst class. It also requires as a practical matter that the mesmer burn blink to get the mindblade bounces and extra mind wrack damage from IP. (Note that Rytlock asks for 20s to reset whenever he messes up his burst during the tests). But the izerker alone often did more damage than the mindwrack.

Given that phantasms are pretty much fire and forget, I’d be more inclined to first revert the 15% baseline damage buff to phantasms before even thinking about further nerfs to mesmer.

Edit: Arken, why is your JI going on a kitten CD when you use it? Shouldn’t it be going on a lower CD due to Monk’s Focus?

Not sure what you mean?

Edit Jasher: Indeed, stated multiple times it was to test how much we could do.

varas.5621:

Hi Arken, thanks for making the video. I think shatter mes and burn guard both have issues, but the beginning of the video is mostly “target golem balancing” involving unrealistic scenarios. I know most people probably won’t watch the entire video, but I’d advise everyone to at least watch the duels starting ~41:20, as they give a better picture of how the classes actually stand.

1. iZerker was just to demonstrate damage, again not really feasible so I can agree with this.

2. It’s more so the conditions afterwards in addition to the stun which is essentially unavoidable. A smart Mesmer will have no issue’s interrupting weapon skills. We dueled many times and I witnessed firsthand how it was to land CI and Powerblock with relative ease. Before the patch, Warlord and I had back-and-forth duels all the time with his interrupt mesmer but the damage was nowhere near the levels it is now.

3. The damage is quite literally instant from a stealth opener. I’m pretty sure we demonstrated that handily.

4/5. Agreed.

6/7. I was just making an assumption of 2 Mantras and a stun-break, thank you for clarifying.

8. Against thieves which can stick to a target relatively easily? Absolutely. A guardian? Not quite due to the lack of said ability.

9. The damage is too high as was stated in my #2 response.

And I think I did discuss the merits of Burn-Guardian not being nearly as OP as many believe due to the lack condition variety. You would be surprised at how many people will run in and out of the circle.

Buran.3796:

Saw it entirely, amazing work, I appreciate a lot this kind of exposition.

And yep, it’s ridiculous: being able to kill characters in like 3-5 seconds seems more in line with a first person shoothen than with a MMO. The power creep is real.

I can appreciate the game leaning towards more twitch play but the issue is that in a lot of cases, you can’t even see the burst coming. Where’s the counterplay in that? Even if you could, the amount of damage isn’t justifiable.

Thank you Sol. Also, that test was AFTER the nerf Mesmers received to Power block, think about that for a second.

The Gates Assassin.9827:

Hello guardians! Lets take a break from murdering my face with burning and talk about how you guys are liking the new traits. Feel free to either directly answer my questions or just talk about what you feel is important for the devs to know about these changes.

Questions:

1. Are you using the new elites at all? I’ve heard from a few guardians that they’re having trouble dropping Renewed Focus for the new ones because RF is just that good.
2. Any new builds besides bunker and power medi? Anyone make a spirit weapon build that’s actually good? I am well aware of your lovely burn build >_<.
3. Has anyone made a good symbols build?
4. Overall, are you happy with the build diversity that guardians have right now?

1. I’ve tried the new shout elite and it’s amazing for bunker builds, not very strong for dps due to the loss of sustain from RF.

2. Bunker might make a comeback but Power seems like it’s taking a backseat. Condition Guardian is far superior.

3. No because of the tiny modifier from Symbolic Avenger and WoP being in Honor.

4. I am happy to see Condition Guardians being strong but i’m a little sad Power Guards got a pretty significant nerf.

Solori.6025:

Arken.3725:

Solori.6025:

Arken.3725:

Hey guys, I recently did some testing with a solid Mesmer(Warlord of Chaos) to see how insane both Condition dmg Guardian and Interrupt Mesmer currently are. Enjoy!

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=46hPricq-RQ

So a glass mesmer does a lot of damage to a class with no toughness..

And burn stacks that are not cleansed instantly do 5k per tick.

Cool..

Are we gonna talk about how anet buffed stats too high or nah?

I shouldn’t even acknowledge this horrendously ignorant post because if you actually watched the video, I stated MULTIPLE times the armor/health values of what we tested and neither had “no toughness.”

Thank you for your constructive post.

Sorry I didn’t listen to anything because sleeping children. Did you know most videos have a mute button that turns off sounds and still let’s the footage run. Weird concept I know. Anyway

Stat compensation was overdone in my opinion. They need to scale back some things and change damage formula. Also powerblock may get the mug treatment

I apologize for coming off like a kitten. This video is to demonstrate how insane burst on both sides is. Obviously we didn’t fight most in the video but towards the end we did some duels.

Zin.6170:

Probably doesn’t matter, but you have your TS info in that vid.

I haven’t watched the whole thing, but good info so far.

Thank you, I missed that

Solori.6025:

Arken.3725:

Hey guys, I recently did some testing with a solid Mesmer(Warlord of Chaos) to see how insane both Condition dmg Guardian and Interrupt Mesmer currently are. Enjoy!

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=46hPricq-RQ

So a glass mesmer does a lot of damage to a class with no toughness..

And burn stacks that are not cleansed instantly do 5k per tick.

Cool..

Are we gonna talk about how anet buffed stats too high or nah?

I shouldn’t even acknowledge this horrendously ignorant post because if you actually watched the video, I stated MULTIPLE times the armor/health values of what we tested and neither had “no toughness.”

Thank you for your constructive post.

Hey guys, I recently did some testing with a solid Mesmer(Warlord of Chaos) to see how insane both Condition dmg Guardian and Interrupt Mesmer currently are. Enjoy!

Here’s the build: http://tinyurl.com/ozmgcek

Again, not only will you put out impressive burning but you’ll also have excellent support utility.

Abissal.6975:

So is condi our most viable build right now ? Or is it just as viable to run Marauder power? I was thinking with the new traits i would try marauder and run Radiance/Valor/Virtues with S/F + H. But your latest two videos kinda made me feel like we should only be running condi now?

Condition Guardian puts out similar damage as a zerker a lot easier while being more sustainable so yes, i’d say it’s much better than power. I run Virtues/Valor/Radiance with my condition build. It works incredibly well with self-sustain(and party support) while still putting out significant condi pressure.

We were supposed to get an executioner type trait from SA but that got nerfed. With symbols being somewhat small as it is, it’s very difficult to justify such a small modifier. The % needs to be 20% and WoP should be in Zeal.

Pitman.9210:

I highly disagree with Strength of the Fallen being not bad. Not being able to die and respawn can and will cost you games.

I’m pretty sure I agreed with you on this unless you meant REALLY good. If that’s the case, i’m sticking by my earlier argument that it’s subpar in comparison to prot on focus or an additional bit of burst(and healing).

Edit to Khain: Again, this is from a purely spvp perspective.

WvW: Ah supportive builds work wonders but as it stands, roaming by yourself is incredibly difficult due to your speed.

PvE: I’m not much of an expert but I could see Sinister meditation builds work incredibly well in PvE due to the consistent burning and solid burst dmg.

Right but as I’ve stated, it discourages you from using your class skill. Terrible design in my opinion.

Altruistic healing is really only conducive with with staff #4. The significant healing only really comes from that.

You are correct Aggrostemma, in WvW AH is pretty incredible. I apologize for not specifying that this video was an overview of spvp only.

AH: I think it’s too situational, not that this is a bad thing but rather you don’t see too many situational traits of this extreme for sustain.

Honor WoP: As it stands, it’s very difficult to keep any competent player within your symbol for very long. The honor tree’s revision doesn’t support any sort of dps/hybrid build. It really is just for support.

Virtues: The sustain gained from AR far exceeds any sort of small soft-cc you would otherwise have taken. Not to mention there’s no RNG aspect to it(like Glacial Heart). You use it intelligently, you get rewarded immensely.

Same with Courage, even before the merge of Shielded-mind with this it’s still infinitely better. Group support of this caliber is FAR superior to some miniscule bit of dmg bonus.

I do appreciate your input.

Also, thank you Brannigan.

Hey guys, did another video on the state of the Guardian post June 23rd. Forgive my stuttering as I haven’t done a recording in a while. Enjoy!

Spartacus.3192:

yup selfless daring has a 1:1 ratio with healing Power. Now that you dont get the 300 healing power from the trait lines it will heal for less than it did last week.

Not true, did a test with 1300 HP and only got it up to 800 on the tooltip. Didn’t do a live test though.

As strong as it is, I hope it stays it its current iteration. I used to always take RF(I still sort of do) but this makes for a very strong contender.

10 seconds. Says it in the tooltip.

From my experience, Condi-guard is incredibly powerful. Moreso than its Power counterpart. I can’t really find a good reason to run power anymore since any sort of symbol build is rendered useless.

I feel like burst guardian is incredibly weak in comparing to conditions guard.

Surprising to see a miss from Black Box’s recent post about the nerfs we’re receiving. The only buff we got was Selfless-daring. The rest of it were a mix of direct/indirect nerfs(dmg modifier nerf/trait competing against some far superior).

Exedore.6320:

Arken.3725:

I can’t remember Empowering Might even being a viable option way back when. 5 second duration, 1 second ICD? Heck, even if the ICD was removed it wouldn’t allow for any major might-stacking.

Empowering Might makes sense if you put your PvE hat on and look at it in a vacuum. In PvE, getting a crit every second is a trivial task, so you can easily have 5 stacks of might on all allies (150 power, 150 condi damage). A little more if you go with +might duration. That’s better than warrior’s empower allies (flat 150 power) and better than some utility skills.

It falls flat in PvE when you remove the vacuum. The Honor trait line isn’t so great for group support, so no one will take it. Other professions have build which are much better at stacking might, freeing up the guardian to do something else.

In PvP/WvW the much lower crit chance and not attacking constantly completely kills it.

Remember that the profession designers tend to look at PvE first.

I really hope this isn’t the case. Balancing from a point of view against an unintelligent target makes no sense. One that doesn’t move or avoid big hits isn’t a good way to balance your game.

? pretty much stated all the nerfs Guardians have received that very few even noticed. This was a massive nerf to Guardian this upcoming patch.

I can’t remember Empowering Might even being a viable option way back when. 5 second duration, 1 second ICD? Heck, even if the ICD was removed it wouldn’t allow for any major might-stacking.

Edit: Forgot to add Binding Jeopardy got a pretty nasty nerf as well. 3 second duration vuln is a pittance.

It wasn’t confirmed but Karl mentioned around 10% and I honestly thought that was a joke. My previous argument still stands that it’s nearly impossible to keep a competent player even near your symbols. I can see this being incredibly strong in PvE where mobs stand still.

Aeolus.3615:

Arken.3725:

Exedore.6320:

Arken.3725:

Motp icd made no sense, you never saw guardians with significant might stacks unlike warriors and elementalists.

This one makes perfect sense. ANet wants to make single blocks more meaningful for the trait and to de-emphasize the power gained by many Shelter blocks. You could argue it went too far, but the general idea is fine.

I can understand that but again with my previous argument, it’s not like we were stacking so much might in comparison to the two professions I listed.

Edit: Excuse my poor grammar with the post before this, was on the phone.

On topic: If anything, giving it 3 stacks per hit on a 1 second ICD would help a lot more. Again, i’m just trying to wrap my head around this since Guardian might-stacking was never a thing(spvp).

Also we have other sources of gaining might.

The only other significant source of gaining might is staff #4 and most Guardians don’t use staff for their own reasons. I’m not trying to dismiss Exedore’s argument which is very sound, i’m just trying to make sense of it when Anet left Warrior’s/Ele’s ability to have much more and longer duration stacks untouched.

Numenlord, SA might be just as lackluster if the recent readyup has any indication. It looks like SA was nerfed down to about 10% which to me, now makes the whole Zeal line pretty much unappealing. Might as well go Radiance.

Exedore.6320:

Arken.3725:

Motp icd made no sense, you never saw guardians with significant might stacks unlike warriors and elementalists.

This one makes perfect sense. ANet wants to make single blocks more meaningful for the trait and to de-emphasize the power gained by many Shelter blocks. You could argue it went too far, but the general idea is fine.

I can understand that but again with my previous argument, it’s not like we were stacking so much might in comparison to the two professions I listed.

Edit: Excuse my poor grammar with the post before this, was on the phone.

On topic: If anything, giving it 3 stacks per hit on a 1 second ICD would help a lot more. Again, i’m just trying to wrap my head around this since Guardian might-stacking was never a thing(spvp).

More than that. Not many understand that guardians got some serious nerfs with this patch which to me. Were completely unjustified.

Motp icd made no sense, you never saw guardians with significant might stacks unlike warriors and elementalists.

Amplified wrath getting it’s DMG needed by more than 50% also made no sense since guardians can only reliably output burning still. No condition weapons still.

Glacial heart moved to virtue’s to compete with a far superior trait that is absolute resolution. No one will take glacial heart again.

Fiery wrath got a tiny nerf again for no reason. Were we seeing unreasonable bursts? Doubt it.

This all made absolutely no sense to me. Nerf a class that was never op to begin with and buff those that currently are? Sigh.

The nerf to Symbolic Avenger feels unjustified. Stated many times but anyone with half a brain won’t stay in your symbols and it’ll only work with Hammer. I can see the dmg being split from pve/pvp because of this but not a straight-up nerf.

A lot of really thought-out suggestions. Some may be considered a little too strong(such as the minor for 15% more crit chance) but your heart is in the right place.

I like this guy. Been saying the same thing for 3 years. Passive’s have been the name of the game for a long time, it’s only just getting stronger.

Saiyan.1704:

I understand why a few items were toned down such as Virtue range, Burn on block and even Might stacking. I accept them and so does the Fr forums.

I don’t. It’s not like Guardians stacked a ton of Might by themselves so what was the point of this nerf? Look at Warriors and to a lesser extent, Elementalists for might-stacking and yet Guardian’s get the nerf? Hell, even with the burn on block, Elementalists could stack longer duration burning with little-to-no investment and yet we get the nerf. Talk about kitten -backwards balancing.

Edit: And they even REVERTED the Drake’s breath nerf! Holy crap.