Guild Wars 2

Splatter Paw.7238:

Lol do you need to see him? Where does a thief need to position to get a BS? Your back! You should revise how you deal with stealth if because you can’t see him, all counter play is void to you for his one trick pony build.

Not really, BS lands from any place except directly in front of the target. I believe if BS actually required one to be behind the target then there wouldn’t be many complaints about it.

SoulSin.5682:

Aza.2105:

Happened to me awhile ago. Here is the damage log:

I think I was wearing a cleric amulet, with 13k hp. I’m amazed Anet allows that type of skill to stay as it is.

Did a few check ups. With 20 stacks of Might I can hit for 13.060 on a Target Golen – Light. If you add a few vulnerability stacks than yes. I can truly confirm this is possible.

Though you need to have a few stars aligned to make that happens on real combat.

I’m not sure if you are trying to say that its difficult to do. Its not, the entire match the samething happened to me over and over. I found it sort of funny, my character didn’t even have dying animation. They just went from standing to laying down.

This is the worst change of the feature patch. I’m going to make it very simple:

Pros:

• More people in empty zones
• More people on empty servers to help do events

Cons:

• There are so many people you can never get tags for loot
• Knowing what overflow you are on is confusing
• Most of the time not grouped with friends or guild mates
• Waiting 10-15mins intervals for pre events to be completed
• Easy to miss bosses due to the fact that one might miss them because of the overflow they are on.
• No longer feels dynamic, but static. World events are now glorified raids.

Happened to me awhile ago. Here is the damage log:

I think I was wearing a cleric amulet, with 13k hp. I’m amazed Anet allows that type of skill to stay as it is.

Hey Anet,

Just did a soloq match, it finished sort of. For whatever reason the timer froze and everyone has been stuck on the map for the past 20mins. If anyone tries to leave they are automatically returned to the map!

Crapgame.6519:

So what is the intent for use or in what meta?

Would this even be used in PvE? I don’t PvE much and when I do I just go full DPS/Zerk in my limited play. I don’t think I’d like to be hit for something to work.

But in PvP / WvW it seems like it would be a good source of damage especially in WvW when crap is flying everywhere. But that is why this was adjusted to begin with. So thanks Arena Net for a stupid worthless trait. Can I get a refund?

Oh – that is probably why they offer free re-trait

My guess is they may have wanted retaliation to be a surrogate condition. In other words in addition to burning, enemies would have to deal with being hit with high retaliation damage too. I don’t think they took into consideration how the retaliation damage cap nullifies radiant retaliation. IF the damage cap was gone, then the trait would actually be good.

As it stands it has no use in pve and no use in pvp.

Zinrae.3769:

From the numbers I got testing in sPvP, the formula is:
214 + 0.15(Condition Damage) instead of 198.45 + 0.075(Power)

This can’t be right. If you are testing against npcs in the spvp lobby then this is why you came up with this. From what I see, the reduction only applies when you are in actual pvp or on a wvw map.

In other words the damage is much lower than what your formula shows. Even with 1845 condition dmg, retaliation only hits for 315.

Crapgame.6519:

In what way? I know they changed it a while back but to what? The tool tip just says scales so what is it capped at?

Seems rather dumb if so because it is a master trait /boggle

In PVP and WvW retaliation damage is reduced by 33%

Blasino.3128:

Retal is nerfed is in WWW also just like PvP. Just in PVE it isn’t.

Yeah I see, I totally forgot about that. Radiant Retaliations scaling in spvp/wvw is horrible. The only way it can be good is if they make it so Radiant Retaliation removes the damage cap.

While it scales good in pve, ret isn’t a great boon for pve.

I’m not sure how you guys are testing. Is it in spvp or pve/wvw? In spvp the difference between scaling with power vs condition isn’t very apparent. In fact, I’m not even sure if it properly works???

In pve I tested. With a full zerker set and 2396 power, retaliation hits for around 386 per hit. Using a rabid set, veggie pizza and a tuning crystal and having 1659 condition dmg, retaliation hits for 456per hit. From my observation, radiant retaliation does make ret better with condition damage than power.

I suspect that the retaliation damage cap in pvp has something to do with the scaling not appearing to be better.

Jerus.4350:

No question the sigil change is great, and the communal defense trait is surely interesting.

As I was discussing with my brother the other day, there’s far more synergies and combinations that seem viable than ther are synergies and combinations you can actually get into smart solid builds.

take the 3k hp for instance. By getting it I’m getting 6k hp from that tree! that’s awesome… except, when I’m going into honor I’m usually already going to be in a more defensive build as it just suites that play style. So then the question becomes “what is that 3k doing for me?” If I’m at 18k hp without it, do I need 21k hp? Now DPS side, that health could be nice, but it’s at the end of the honor tree… I guess I could make a hammer build going that way but I’d likely end up losing the 10% dam zeal trait to do so, and that health isn’t all that necessary so ugh…

That’s kinda my thought on most of the traits. “ok cool… but am I really going to use any of these?” and honestly, /shrug not really. With the new trait respeccing I may use em here and there but none of them are anything exciting. Cool ideas, plenty of power in them, but they simply don’t fit the build concepts where I could swap them in, and they don’t really seem worth building to in the builds that could use them.

I do appreciate the response and I agree they have some power in them. I just can’t say any of them are exciting.

My opinion is not so much negative as it is just not positive, which is kinda disappointing. Although it does irk me that they nerfed our vigor then gave us a trait for more endurance regen… yeah…But that opinion goes for the entire update. My DPS setup nerfed from fero, my support build nerfed due to boon duration decimation, everythiing upgraded thanks to the sigils, half the dungeons are easier due to better downscaling, and new traits are /meh. It’s a whole feature update of /meh, other than wardrobe which is pretty cool, though I’m not a big fan of the new hero window UI.

I personally feel that it will be many months before new builds are even considered by the general populace of players. The only way most players begin to try different builds is when someone who they consider a “leader” creates videos and a thread describing how to utilize the build. So for now I expect most people to continue to run the exact same thing until that happens.

You raise some good points though, however I feel you are the only person who can answer those questions.

Its a Radeon 280x/7970 series problem. Many people have it. Try to contact AMD to try to push them into looking into it.

Obtena.7952:

43 now, was 30 prepatch. Still feels a little low but like any heals, only gets more effective with healing power.

In wvw/pve with 1700 healing power it gives aroun 89hp per tick. So it scales modestly.

foofad.5162:

No, that’s normal for a Hammer command crit.

Since when? The most I’ve ever seen it crit was for 6kish pre patch.

Edit:

Nah man, definitely not normal lmao:

https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/professions/balance/Guardian-Hammer-of-wisdom-INSANE-OP/first#post3911362

Yea I know you guys haven’t tried spirit weapons. Maybe you will now. I just did a pvp match and smacked someone for 10k with hammer of wisdom. Could it be that Anet buffed spirit weapons? :O

Harbinger.8637:

Aza.2105:

Harbinger.8637:

That’s pretty bad still considering you have that high of healing power. That are a lot more beneficial runes to choose from.

It puts it on the same level as a mango pie. I wouldn’t say there are more beneficial runes out there but more so other options.

And to answer your question Obtena, without healing power its 43hp per tick.

The thing is you have 1400 healing power to hit 77 hps, which is still lower then Mango Pie. Very rarely do Guardian builds have that much, and if u do you give up a lot to hit that high of a stat. That’s why I said there are better choices out there because most builds don’t have that level of healing power.

With no healing power it’s 43hps, which isn’t much better then the pre-patch one. So for the typical guardian build I’d say it who be fair to average around 50-60hps. Which isn’t that significant.

I understand your perspective.

My perspective is if someone is looking for a rune set that compliments their healing build, then Dolyak is now a viable option.

Harbinger.8637:

That’s pretty bad still considering you have that high of healing power. That are a lot more beneficial runes to choose from.

It puts it on the same level as a mango pie. I wouldn’t say there are more beneficial runes out there but more so other options.

And to answer your question Obtena, without healing power its 43hp per tick.

Obtena.7952:

Anyone know if the tick value has changed on the regen for these runes?

With 1400 healing I get around 77hp per sec.

xFx.3247:

Did you say that Guardians can throw a lot of conditions together to make up a nice condition damage? Sigh No wonder we are doomed. Check yer list when you die by engineer and report your finding to us, as to what killed you.

Perhaps you find engineers problematic in spvp but I personally do not. The mind of the experimenter affects the experiment.

Jerus.4350:

Aza.2105:

If you don’t like the class then try another class that fits what you want to do. Its useless to continue to complain, obvious Anet has a different vision of guardian than most players do.

Personally speaking, I think the new traits are good. They open up a lot of different possibilities. But this is just my perspective.

Care to elaborate? I see some viability in Communal Defense maybe. But the rest /shrug.

I always approach class changes objectively, looking at it subjectively (i.e what I want, if I could change this etc) often makes one overlook things.

The first thing I did when I logged in was go to spvp and make a condition guardian. During my first match I was grouped with Chaplan! Anyhow, I went to test out amplified wrath.

My findings is that the trait is extremely powerful, burning ticks in spvp was 808 per tick (in pve I was getting around 1200 per tick fully buffed), without the trait its around 605. Most players worry about one thing with guardian and burning: That enemies will just remove it. This is true. But the rate at which guardian can reapply it is far higher than any enemy can remove it.

Another great change that affects everyone is the sigil change. This allows guardian to finally gain access to easy poisons, bleeds and chills. Between the sigil changes, burning and binding blade, guardian can throw around a lot of condition damage relatively easy.

I next tried radiant retaliation. I feel the trait is good but it believe its mainly geared towards condition guardians who may try to use 2h weapons for condition application, mainly greatsword.

Communal Defense is really really interesting. When I was doing teq last night, I noticed that when I used communal defense that it applied to the entire zerg. How did I know? Because I had pure of heart traited, so each time I blocked and communal defense wasn’t on cd, I seen a screen full of 805hps pop up. I’m not sure if that is intentional but if it is, its definitely powerful. Also, if it works for pure of heart then it probably works for shattered aegis. It might become extremely powerful in a wvw setting.

Force of Will is good, its passive but good. When you look at it objectively you are getting the same amount of vitality you get by investing into a entire trait line. I’d say that’s worth its keep. Some people say why take it over pure of voice? If you run consecrations you don’t need pure of voice. Remember none of the traits are suppose to be replacements but options.

Sadly I didn’t try purity of body. I will probably try today.

Blasino.3128:

I’d argue Engie can do a better job of keeping up burning.

Explain.

Charak.9761:

burn doesn’t stick very long and I wouldn’t trade out travelers

It depends on what weapon he is using and what aspect of the game he is participating in. If its in a pve group, most likely burning will nearly almost be up. Spvp/wvw won’t be as consistent. However guardian can upkeep burning much better than any other class.

If you don’t like the class then try another class that fits what you want to do. Its useless to continue to complain, obvious Anet has a different vision of guardian than most players do.

Personally speaking, I think the new traits are good. They open up a lot of different possibilities. But this is just my perspective.

Charak.9761:

you only need 20 in virtues for the condi removal f2, all grandmaster traits in virtues are not worth droping points from another tier.

Are you basing your perspective on pvp or pve?

style.6173:

Aza.2105:

style.6173:

OhMyTaeyeon.5831:

style.6173:

What a lot of people in this thread fail to realize is that the F skills are intended to be really strong across all professions. Thief is included in that. I don’t really have an issue with the current set up.

Guardian’s F skills SO STRONG. Not.

Are you serious???

You must not play guardian. It has good F skills. Try putting some points in the virtues line and you’ll see what I mean. There is a reason the current meta is 30 points in virtues.

Virtues have counter play though. They are subject to the general rules of the game: boon steal/strips and blinds (for voj). This is probably why there are no complaints about virtues. They have counters.

Then why do people put 30 points in virtues.

The point of my comment wasn’t whether any of the F skills for any profession are TOO strong. My point is that they tend to be highly used. It is intended.

Yea but how strong is too strong? My perspective is anything without counter play is destined to become overpowered because of misuse. The op is right steal does a lot for just one skill.

style.6173:

OhMyTaeyeon.5831:

style.6173:

What a lot of people in this thread fail to realize is that the F skills are intended to be really strong across all professions. Thief is included in that. I don’t really have an issue with the current set up.

Guardian’s F skills SO STRONG. Not.

Are you serious???

You must not play guardian. It has good F skills. Try putting some points in the virtues line and you’ll see what I mean. There is a reason the current meta is 30 points in virtues.

Virtues have counter play though. They are subject to the general rules of the game: boon steal/strips and blinds (for voj). This is probably why there are no complaints about virtues. They have counters.

Ezrael.6859:

From the patch notes – Fixed a bug that caused burning to be applied twice when activated.

This has halved the burning duration for skill 4, completely removing its role as an off-hand that could apply a decent melee range burning duration for an otherwise terrible weapon.

The Torch is our least used weapon, skill 5 is useless and serves an incredibly niche role of letting you cleave some targets for pitiful damage if you have a Scepter equipped, otherwise you will do far more damage with the Scepter’s auto-attack.

But even with a Scepter you are situationally better off with either a Focus or Shield equipped.

I never used the Torch personally as it’s too terrible to even contemplate equipping.
I just don’t understand the thinking by the devs here, you take the least used weapon in a profession’s builds and you reduce its effectiveness? Where is the logic?

The Torch needs buffs not nerfs.

I totally didn’t see that one.

Its unfortunate but a bug fix is a bug fix.

PS

I don’t think communal defense has a target limit.

Ezrael.6859:

Was already a weak off-hand option for us that very few Guardians actually tried to use. The only skill worth using was 4 for decent burning duration (which has to be applied from melee range) and its secondary option that occasionally crit for respectable damage.

Now nerfed… lol.

Guardians are in a good place.

Its not nerfed, it was just a tooltip fix.

Powerful trait for small scale group pvp. Its not much of a solo trait.

Obtena.7952:

I guess the point was to force a marriage between condition damage gear on retalitation builds … clearly a terrible idea.

I’d use it if I was running a condition build with a 2h weapon.

Hunter.4783:

Are you saying spirit weapons and condi dmg are in a good spot?

Guardian can stack a lot of conditions now. Go investigate!

Arken.3725:

Aza.2105:

Arken.3725:

It’s rather interesting because Virtues were supposed to be a selfish mechanic when in solo-play and yet the actives are much more potent regardless of play.

Sadly the passive virtues are only good after traiting into the virtue tree. I have to admit that supreme justice and permeating wrath are amazing traits. Unfortunately guardian’s condition builds are less than optimal. How is that for a contradiction?

Supreme Justice is fairly decent but as you say, condi-guard is incredibly lackluster. I find Permeating Wrath to be a bit backwards, shouldn’t the AoE of fire be around your target and not you?

I always felt the skill description of permeating wrath was a bit misleading. I do agree that the aoe should be centered around the target instead of the guardian. That would open up the ability to use the trait with scepter.

With respect to supreme justice and permeating wrath, I feel they are powerful. Its just with guardian its hard to see how strong they are. Imagine if a class like engineer or necro had VOJ+ supreme justice and permeating wrath. There would be tons of complaints asking for it to be nerfed.

Evalia.7103:

And now remove 90% of the skills here that provide AOE conditions or something.
Or Save Yourselves. It’s probably not selfish, right?
Then remove the rest if you are playing a Spirit Weapon build, which makes AOE actually just for yourself(although the build is pretty bad at the moment sadly).
Yes, Guardian’s can be selfish alright.

Sorry man, I’m not understanding what you are trying to illustrate here. Can you be a bit more specific?

Arken.3725:

It’s rather interesting because Virtues were supposed to be a selfish mechanic when in solo-play and yet the actives are much more potent regardless of play.

Sadly the passive virtues are only good after traiting into the virtue tree. I have to admit that supreme justice and permeating wrath are amazing traits. Unfortunately guardian’s condition builds are less than optimal. How is that for a contradiction?

I often see the term “selfish guardian” come up nearly every time I see someone inquiring about the use of AH in a pve build. From my perspective the term seems like a oxymoron due to the innate supportive nature of the guardian class. It would be really difficult to create a guardian build that does nothing for the group.

I wondered how many of skills that most guardian may use are actually supportive? I did not include underwater weapons or traits, just the baseline guardian. Also, I consider any form of boon granting to allies and blind to be supportive. Out of 60 skills, 32 of them are supportive. Here is what I came up with:

Virtues

• 1. Virtue of Resolve
• 2. Virtue of Courage

Greatsword

• 3. Leap of Faith
• 4. Symbol of Wrath

Hammer

• 5. Symbol of Protection

Staff

• 6. Orb of Light
• 7. Symbol of Swiftness
• 8. Empower

Mace

• 9. Faithful Strike
• 10. Symbol of Faith
• 11. Protectors strike

Sword

• 12. Flashing Blade

Focus

• 13. Ray of Judgement

Shield

• 14. Shield of Judgement
• 15. Shield of Absorption

Torch

• 16. Cleansing Flame

Healing

• 17. Healing Breeze

Utility

• 18. Hallowed Ground
• 19. Purging Flames
• 20. Sanctuary
• 21. Wall of Reflection
• 22. Merciful Intervention
• 23. Hold the Line!
• 24. Retreat!
• 25. Save Yourselves!
• 26. Stand Your Ground!
• 27. Signet of Judgement
• 28. Signet of Mercy
• 29. Bow of Truth
• 30. Shield of the Avenger
• 31. Tome of Courage
• 32. Tome of Wrath

Over 50% of guardian’s skills are supportive. Despite claims of a “selfish guardian”, its impossible to make one. Especially due to Virtues being baseline. The closest one can get to being truly selfish is by running Scepter with no offhand, full zeal, Valor and refusing to activate Virtues while allies are around. From what I observe guardian has the most baseline supportive skills in the game, that is quite a impressive feat.

So to you guys out there that use the term “selfish guardian”, you might want to think twice!

ArchonWing.9480:

Why pair mace with a shield?

Shield 4 is crap because you are melee and offering protection to people in front of you. It doesn’t make any sense if you’re up front.

Shield 5 knocks people away, and mace has no reach… and not to mention that awful root.

Torch is better with Mace because it gives you nominally more reach even if the damage is pretty mediocre, plus torch 4 actually gives you a threat to people from afar.

It seems to me that focus is far superior to shield for the same reason it’s a superior offhand with any other weapon. Focus 5 gives you more damage and also can serve as an addition block to the mace’s block and 4 gives more support. It’s also a blast finisher (admittingly on a long cooldown)

Hammer is better in many cases, but mace healing isn’t completely useless either when used in conjunction with other hammer guardians. I know it’s hard to really justify regeneration and healing over protection, but hey, protection doesn’t protect you from all attacks!

IMO, hammer is the far superior AH weapon, while mace is better off in a healway one as it scales quite well with healing power. Though it’s actually not a bad dps weapon… and here comes focus again! It’s kinda funny to actually run into a zerg and boom, protector’s strike downs some people!

But yes, there’s really no reason why the thing should hit at the same speed as a hammer. It doesn’t have to be 2x faster; but it needs to be faster than hammer.

I tried the mace/torch together for the past few days. I was surprised that they actually go together so well, except cosmetically. It definitely feels better than mace/shield or mace/focus.

Zacchary.6183:

Aza.2105:

This is a very misleading. You are asking for thief survivability to be buffed for compensation. But what you don’t realize is that a zerker thief has the highest survivability out of any zerker class, this includes the heavy classes like warrior and guardian as well.

The question is how can that be? Stealth and blinds. Not being hit is the best form of mitigation. If stealth was nerfed the compensation is for thief players to pick up a defensive trinket like cleric, soldier etc if they want to survive. This is what every other class has to do, why should thief be any different?

That is funny. No, thief has very little “mitigation”. Mitigation is a lessening of severity. What thief has to rely on is “Avoidance” but the difference here is that mitigation works all of the time while avoidance doesn’t. If avoidance fails, thieves suffer the full effects of the attack and must deal with it.

You take full damage in stealth and still suffer from conditions. The visual effect is what keeps you from getting hit so long as the enemy isn’t competent. Yes you can remove 1 condition every three seconds while in stealth but guess what, that’s the best we get.

Warrior can remove all conditions in 40 seconds or 3 in ~6 seconds, even get near immunity to a few. They got blocks, invulns, plenty of passive HPS, a utility that buffs vitality and toughness on top of having the highest base Health and armor the game provides. They can even take advantage of Superior Runes of the Soldier for even more mitigation.

And Warriors have been nerfed once… once. Why should every other profession be any different?

This is a good post to show the results of living in denial. You try to make it entirely about a totally different class in order to prove your point why thief doesn’t have broken mechanics.

What thief stealths and just sits in the same place? Once they stealth is the enemy has to play a guessing game with the direction they might of went. Are you suggesting that players are (or should be) psychic? And that by some divine power everyone should be able to intuitively feel where the thief is while stealth?

tom.7468:

Aza.2105:

Cygnus.6903:

This is a thief nerf.

therefor, it should never be implemented without significantly buffing thief survivability options out of stealth. D/P and D/D would become unusable instantly otherwise.

IMO, stealth is not a problem right now.

This is a very misleading. You are asking for thief survivability to be buffed for compensation. But what you don’t realize is that a zerker thief has the highest survivability out of any zerker class, this includes the heavy classes like warrior and guardian as well.

The question is how can that be? Stealth and blinds. Not being hit is the best form of mitigation. If stealth was nerfed the compensation is for thief players to pick up a defensive trinket like cleric, soldier etc if they want to survive. This is what every other class has to do, why should thief be any different?

Ever played warrior? this is zerker stats without any buffs or traits. With 30 in defense and dolyak singet they get 2,8k armor thats almost as much as full bunker on theif.
The theif is the SQUISHIEST profession.
Elementalist at least have access to protection and some strong healing skills.
You know what happens if a theif fail a dodge? he go splat.
there is nothing more risky than going zerk on theif.
I killed lots of theives its all about timing.
You must be one of those who dont even dodge when fighting thieves.

Those stats are meaningless. You do know that even with 3.6k armor you will still eat a 4.5k+ backstab right? That’s almost half of guardians base hp.

Translation: There isn’t much difference in terms of mitigation between the three different armor tiers. Also, according to you logic Elementalists have more surviability than thieves do because they have protection. Funny.

P.S

Awesome story about how you killed thieves. Everyone who tries to defend the class have these magical stories how easy it is but other people just do not know how.

Cygnus.6903:

This is a thief nerf.

therefor, it should never be implemented without significantly buffing thief survivability options out of stealth. D/P and D/D would become unusable instantly otherwise.

IMO, stealth is not a problem right now.

This is a very misleading. You are asking for thief survivability to be buffed for compensation. But what you don’t realize is that a zerker thief has the highest survivability out of any zerker class, this includes the heavy classes like warrior and guardian as well.

The question is how can that be? Stealth and blinds. Not being hit is the best form of mitigation. If stealth was nerfed the compensation is for thief players to pick up a defensive trinket like cleric, soldier etc if they want to survive. This is what every other class has to do, why should thief be any different?

Obtena.7952:

Aza.2105:

Obtena.7952:

I feel that as the primary healing weapon, Mace is correctly designed. For me the question isn’t molding poorly used weapons/stats/traits into useful ones … it’s for the game to make the focus of these things more meaningful. You can make a build that uses Mace to it’s fullest capability and it gives good damage and healing. The problem is that there isn’t alot of place in the game where the advantages of using the Mace are fully exploited because healing isn’t the most effective damage mitigation in GW2. Even if they tweeked the Mace for better damage … still no one would use it. It couldn’t be a tweak, it would have to be something as extreme as the suggestion made by the OP.

My perspective is even if the game was changed to were healing was a legit form of mitigation, mace would still be weak. This is coming from the perspective of pvp. In a pvp setting its rare to actually land the 3rd attack in the AA chain.

As you know in pvp no one stacks, even if they decided to stack on a target its unlikely that landing the mace 3rd attack would happen, since the target would be dead very quickly. Faithful strike is just too slow.

I feel they should spread out the healing of the AA chain. Instead of being 600 health on the final hit, it should be 200, 200, 200. It would make the AA of mace less punishing in a pvp setting. This of course is just my opinion, others may disagree.

I think what we have here is a recognition that not every weapon is intended for every element of the game. Staff blows in PVE too but has a place in WvW, for example.

l’m not sure where Mace fits in. Of the different types of play, I would say it fits sPvP the worst, WvW the best. Perhaps doubling the attack speed of it does make it more interesting in pvp but those kinds of changes can’t be considering without seeing how they impact other parts of the game as well.

Mace a wvw weapon? It seems its better for spvp since the weapon lacks mobility. Imo there is just too much movement in wvw for mace to be a good weapon. Mace seems like its designed around turtling/camping playstyle.

Obtena.7952:

I feel that as the primary healing weapon, Mace is correctly designed. For me the question isn’t molding poorly used weapons/stats/traits into useful ones … it’s for the game to make the focus of these things more meaningful. You can make a build that uses Mace to it’s fullest capability and it gives good damage and healing. The problem is that there isn’t alot of place in the game where the advantages of using the Mace are fully exploited because healing isn’t the most effective damage mitigation in GW2. Even if they tweeked the Mace for better damage … still no one would use it. It couldn’t be a tweak, it would have to be something as extreme as the suggestion made by the OP.

My perspective is even if the game was changed to were healing was a legit form of mitigation, mace would still be weak. This is coming from the perspective of pvp. In a pvp setting its rare to actually land the 3rd attack in the AA chain.

As you know in pvp no one stacks, even if they decided to stack on a target its unlikely that landing the mace 3rd attack would happen, since the target would be dead very quickly. Faithful strike is just too slow.

I feel they should spread out the healing of the AA chain. Instead of being 600 health on the final hit, it should be 200, 200, 200. It would make the AA of mace less punishing in a pvp setting. This of course is just my opinion, others may disagree.

Obtena.7952:

Aza.2105:

Obtena.7952:

I’m inclined to say no, especially if you are talking about reducing ALL the Mace weapon attack times by 50%. Even if only #1 was speed up 2 times, it would be rather ridiculous, especially coupled with a passive VoJ. You just increased my damage, doubled my healing for me and surrounding allies and gave me a less than 2 second passive VoJ cooldown. Have to pass on this idea.

In pvp is quite rare to pull of a entire mace AA. In fact trying to finish the chain is down right punishing. Imo from a pvp perspective a buff to the AA speed is justified, or at least a slight range increase on the attacks.

Perhaps with communal defense we’ll start to see more players make builds around mace, but this might be wishful thinking.

Perhaps, but in contrast, the same is would be true of Hammer, but I understand Hammer is a more popular weapon in PvP.

As a slight diversion, perhaps it’s worth considering that it’s not so much the Mace that is deficient but the offhands it could be paired with? Focus/Sheild simply add more effective defensive options, not as necessary with an already healing-focused weapon like Mace. Torch would be the only offensive off hand you could pair with Mace, I don’t feel that’s a good marriage.

I will confess, if chain #3 was even 3/4 second to execute, It would make Mace a little more attractive without being over the top.

Do you feel mace is powerful or it will be powerful with slight tweaks? Do you feel that the healing on the AA chain will save allies or help them?

Obtena.7952:

I’m inclined to say no, especially if you are talking about reducing ALL the Mace weapon attack times by 50%. Even if only #1 was speed up 2 times, it would be rather ridiculous, especially coupled with a passive VoJ. You just increased my damage, doubled my healing for me and surrounding allies and gave me a less than 2 second passive VoJ cooldown. Have to pass on this idea.

In pvp is quite rare to pull of a entire mace AA. In fact trying to finish the chain is down right punishing. Imo from a pvp perspective a buff to the AA speed is justified, or at least a slight range increase on the attacks.

Perhaps with communal defense we’ll start to see more players make builds around mace, but this might be wishful thinking.

Hmmm is it a heating issue?

Hey Allie,

I haven’t interacted with you very much. But regardless, I wish you luck with what ever you choose to pursue in the future.

Painbow.6059:

I think making it scale with power would make the skill great, it would at least make it more useful in pve

Agreed.

Spending the past few days playing around with ZB, I can’t help but to feel that Anet was a bit short sided with the design on the skill. But this seems to be a common theme with the zeal trait line. With the exception of fiery wrath, all of zeal traits feel aimless.

Uhtameit.2413:

Aza.2105:

Andele.1306:

Burnfall.9573:

infantrydiv.1620:

Maybe if you wanted a more mobile class you shouldn’t have picked the heavy armor white mage archetype ^.^ not known for being particularly nimble

To begin with, how is it possible in mmo history where a Heavy Set warrior class run fast/er than a cheetah?

also…

How is it possible for a Heavy Set warrior to be the Undisputed King of Speed than the Light Set 125 pound cheetah?

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=V8vejjVgIHg

" This is Why You Can’t Outrun a Cheetah "

Of course

see> Warriors

There are these things called “trains” and “airships” and “charr siege tanks”, all of them run faster than a silly kitty cat for a much longer amount of time, why else do you think that getting away from a warrior feels like surviving a trainwreck? badum tshhh

P.S. To whiny people, if you feel lacking movement speed, play mesmer for a while, if you feel like lacking mobility, play necro for a while; also on that note movement speed =/= mobility.

Your point is invalid, both necro and mesmer have adequate range capabilities.

And guardian has scepter, focus, torch (scepter has the same range regardless of class, and if you wanna 1200 range, just use meditation teleport). As for soft cc, GS has one. That plus the other gap closers that were mentioned and guardian is just fine.

Theoretical perspectives like what you wrote above shows how little you have invested in the class. Theoretically scepter is a 1200 ranged weapon, but this is only when you look at the stats on paper.

Utilizing it in game tells a different tale, its probably one of the worst ranged options in the game. The slow and inaccurate projectiles negate any possible advantage it may have, making it a better melee weapon than ranged weapon. Most guardian who have invested a lot of time into the class will tell you that they use scepter when they do not have a choice, not because its a good weapon.

Focus is a good weapon, but its paired with sword more often. Torch skill 4 hits hard, but the weapon as a whole feels very weak in comparison to focus and even shield. No one really uses torch in wvw, pve or pvp. Seeing that you recommended using the hammer to be able to apply chill shows you have a vast disconnection with the class itself. You are more so clinging to concepts, technicalities and theoretical ideas instead of application itself.

I haven’t seen many players mention this trait since it was changed to scale with healing power. I’ve been experimenting with the trait on and off with a cleric set in wvw. With almost 1600 healing power, it heals for around 57hp per attack.

It can be quite powerful in a few circumstances and in some comparable to AH. However it has similar weaknesses as AH, instead of requiring lots of allies to increase the efficiency of the skill, it requires a lot of targets. Its also completely dependent on the aoe cooldowns for GS (symbol of wrath and whirling wrath). When those two skills are up and you are in the midst of a zerg it heals for a lot.

When those skills are down, zealous blade then feels a bit weak. Single target attacks just do not feel sustaining enough. Overall I feel the healing aspect of the trait is solid, but a bit misplaced since it scales with healing power.

Overall:

• + Scales modestly with healing power
• + Strong healing when aoe cooldowns are up while fighting a group of enemies
• + A decent alternative to AH, while AH requires granting boons to allies ZB is offensive. It also has a damage modifier

• - Needs healing power to increase its efficiency
• - Because it requires healing power the trait feels misplaced, it should scale with power instead
• - Depends heavily on aoe cooldowns
• - Weak for small scale fights, but decent for large scale fights

bhagwad.4281:

I don’t main a guardian, but I’ve been having some success with it in PvP as a dps/meditation build. Good in teamfights, decent dps and so on and so forth.

On the other hand, I don’t play a warrior in PvP (only PvE), but from what I know, a warrior has:

1. Much better stability (a bit odd considering this should be a guardian’s forte)

Guardian is better at providing stability to allies.

2. Better condi removal (there’s a trait that removes condis for each bar adrenaline). That itself is…wow!

Guardian has excellent condition removal options that also can remove it from allies. Purging flames, Absolute resolution, Pure of Voice, Cleansing Flame (torch 5), Ray of Light.

3. Better damage. No explanation necessary

Warriors definitely can deliver better damage in pvp.

4. Far superior CC. The hammer AoE CC in particular is of such awesome group utility that it’s hard to find a better one. And it can be spammed so often that it can repeatedly change the course of a fight.

Definitely. Guardian has little CC, its one of the worst aspects of the class.

5. Healing: Not really sure about this. I think guardians have a lot of defense, but healing signet and lyssa runes…super!

This is tough. Warrior has better passive healing. But Guardian has better active healing, most of which can heal allies.

6. Better condis. If specced for it, I think warriors can apply much heavier condis than guardians, is that not correct?

Guardian doesn’t even have a viable condition spec.

7. Better mobility. I love my DPS guardian, but the bugger is just so darn slow!

Mobility is another weakness of the guardian profession unfortunately.

8. More health. Not sure why, but guardian has the lowest health pool of all and warrior has the highest isn’t that so?

I believe in beta guardian had the same base health as warrior, but it was nerfed due players saying guardian was just too hard to kill. Interesting enough, warrior is probably much tougher to kill than beta guardian, yet they retain their large base health.

I’m not sure why exactly I haven’t taken my warrior to PvP yet. But…I don’t know I’m having a good time with my guardian but I can’t help feeling that I’m losing out.

For those who’re much much more experienced than me in playing a guard, can you tell me what we do better than warriors? As an example, take the dps/meditation build I’m currently running. Would my team be better served by a warrior instead all things like skill etc being equal?

Ultimately I play PvP to win…

In my opinion warrior is a offensive heavy armor profession and guardian is a supportive heavy armor profession. They have similarities, but distinct differences. If you like to be the pillar in your group then play guardian. If you want a more aggressive and self focused playstyle go warrior.