Guild Wars 2

Behellagh.1468:

Grebcol.5984:

problem is gw 2 doenst have good mutlicore support and there is the main problem.i think when this game use 2-3 cores it will run a lot smoother than now.

It already uses 2-3 cores, it just doesn’t scale past that. The game is multithreaded, it has over 40 threads running but only 8 or so are using 20% or more of a core each with two at around 50% and one using above 75%. The performance of that lone 75% thread determines overall performance which is why people keep referring to single thread performance. The faster the CPU, the faster that thread can run and the higher the frame rate.

A faster GPU doesn’t help because it’s binding on the CPU side of the renderer, setting up all the calls to the driver. The game uses Dx9 so the renderer can’t be multithreaded easily if at all.

Reflections and shadows are both CPU intensive, turning down those options will improve your frame rate.

Its making poor use of multi core cpus. Lineage 2 uses 2 cores as well and it still runs at 20fps on todays machines. Do not try to make excuses for the optimization in this game, by no means does this game genuinely take advantage of multi threading.

Hey Sensotix,

I think your initial post is great and I can agree with most of it.

I feel that what has happened with the warrior class over the year is that Anet simply started to apply guardian strengths to the warrior class. Looking back at last years description of each class it stated specifically that warrior wasn’t very good at condition removal and needed other classes to do this for them.

That their high hp pool was due to the fact that they were missing things like a powerful condition removal and the ability to sustain through long durations. Similar to how necros have high hp pools because they are expected to mitigate through death shroud and the fact that they have poor mobility.

Even on wiki it states guardian has low hp compared to warrior because they have better passive health regeneration. But this isn’t close to being true now. Anet has essentially nullified warriors class weakness but did not bother to offset their strengths to accomodate these changes.

If warrior had low tier hp or even mid tier. I don’t feel we’d have so many complaints about them as we do now.

Josh Davis.6015:

I can confirm that Olrun’s build is one of the best bunker builds for warrior. Thanks for the guide, Olrun!

And warrior players often say the class can’t bunker.

I run a similar build except I take vigorous shouts and rampage. Its a great elite for debunkering and holding the point until allies come to help.

Blackjack.5621:

happened 4 times in the last 2 days to me, i proc stability from lyssa runes and get ccd while stability is up (it didnt get removed, it´s a problem of things happening same time). running around in a 3sec fear and dieing feels so wrong when it´s actually you who should get the stomp off, but isntead you lose because of a stupid bug.

Happens to me all the time.

I’ve tested, I used hallowed ground and I got feared multiple times in it. Dunno what causes it.

Dardamaniac.1295:

Actually after seeing a lot of “major” balance patches i believe that the “major” balance patch isnt coming cause Anet dont know, they cant, they are not good enough, name it whatever you like to bring a major balance patch..

If they try to make big impact changes probably they will destroy the game, they will make our PC explode or something..

So they make small not important changes..

Do you remember the “BIG” balance patch before 10dec, the one we had to wait cause the Pax event was on and players would be too “confused”..

Imagine what would have changed to the meta of pax event even if the 2 next balance patches went out before PAX…….
Y, a big NOTHING, every player would play the exact same thing..

This game is officially out of the competitive pvp scene..
Casual friendly “pve killing huge dragons-breaking doors and taking castles” game

I feel the team responsible for pvp is directionless.

jportell.2197:

DeathPanel.8362:

jportell.2197:

This thread is about the heal so why woudn’t i mention the heal? Also if you use meditations in pve content such as dungeons fractals or world boss fights…. You are possibly the most selfish guardian in the game… Meditations are great for DPS pvp, open world pve, solo wvw. Thats it. Using it in zergs, dungeons, boss fights etc… There are so many great and “imaginative” builds that use other things besides meditations because they provide group support something meditations completely lack.

It’s irrelevant that you don’t want to comment on pve. The topic does not make that distinction so I commented on it. Also, I’ve already stated this numerous times. The heal is an addendum, and therefore you can choose not to use it if it doesn’t work for you. Therefore it in no way magnifies any problems.

The most useful aspects of the guardian is in the reflects, blinds, and virtues and those are in tact in any meditation build and one of the meditations can be swapped out for consecration or stand your ground for specific encounters that require stability so your statements regarding meditation group play is invalid.

Because in Pve yes this heal can be useful with mobs that don’t run away from you. In tPvP it can be somewhat useful since it is all about capping the points. In wvw it is utterly useless…

Also while a meditation spec can “bring” all those things… The wasted 30 trait points spent going into meditations is what kills your group support. They bring no vulnerability (symbols/blinds), No damage modifiers (compared to 25 in any other line besides valor), and no condi removal from the virtues (because if you use meditations chances are you won’t go more than 10 into virtues).

You can’t sit and tell me that you run a full meditation build that brings all the other stuff that a build like 10/25/0/5/25 or any other variation brings… There is a reason the “best” guard builds for pve stay away from valor… Because aside from strength in numbers it is generally useless for pve. In pvp that is another story entirely.

If you know dungeons are ez mode, then why do you persist in trying to debate what is the optimal build is to run them? Its a oxymoron.

jportell.2197:

Aza.2105:

jportell.2197:

Balefire.7592:

jportell.2197:

Aza.2105:

jportell.2197:

DeathPanel.8362:

jportell.2197:

DeathPanel.8362:

jportell.2197:

DeathPanel.8362:

Dynnen.6405:

If someone sees us CASTING our meditation, they run from us. Since we don’t have any soft CC…they get away and we have a useless heal.

Please, please, please, get off this idea of Guards ‘holding points’ and letting people get away from us. Its gotten old and there are many problems with the Guard. Fix it quickly.

This change in no way “magnifies problems”. First of all you don’t need to take the heal if you don’t like it.

Secondly you are talking from purely a pvp/wvw perspective, and ignored pve applications.

This skill is very good for meditation guards in pve since it is a meditation and will trigger additional heal and fury as well as very good sustain against multiple mobs due to the life gain on damage.

If you run meditations anywhere but open world… i just…

You can run meditations anywhere. Most roaming guard builds are meditation based. And I’ve already stated before, the heal is not required. You can use whatever heal you were using before so this whole post about how the new heal “magnifies” problems makes no sense.

The heal magnifies the problem because in order to get the most use out of the heal you have to do damage. In order to do damage you need to be on your target. In a pvp environment where people don’t come running at you and stand there for you to bludgeon them so you can heal you need to have good gap closers and good snares…

Guards have a laughable amount of either. You can not have a class with only one legitimate and very predictable ranged weapon, have terrible gap closers.

As for those dismissing med guards in pve, bads with no imagination will always be bads with no imagination.

This thread is about the heal so why woudn’t i mention the heal? Also if you use meditations in pve content such as dungeons fractals or world boss fights…. You are possibly the most selfish guardian in the game… Meditations are great for DPS pvp, open world pve, solo wvw. Thats it. Using it in zergs, dungeons, boss fights etc… There are so many great and “imaginative” builds that use other things besides meditations because they provide group support something meditations completely lack.

You can successfully run meditations in any aspect of the game. I’ve ran mediations exclusively for awhile with my static group just to test viability and if it affected my group. It did not.

Then you had someone else providing all the reflects? In things such as dungeons Meditations are completely lacking group synergy…. No fire fields which means less might, no reflects at all… No party wide boons, no stability, no group condition clear….

Viability=/=optimal…. While meditations are great in theory. In group play such as dungeons they are eh…

Saying meditations are great in all aspects of the game is like saying I am going to run clerics in every aspect of the game just because I know its viable.

Would you like to trade them for a Necro’s Corruptions? Or maybe trade heal skills with Signet of Vampirism?

Necro corruptions are one of those things that is actually very strong in a pvp environment but not so much in a pve environment. And the new necro signet I can’t comment on because I don’t have a necro that I play regularly. I can’t see it being too amazing though… But this is about how guardians new heal skill shows just how hard it is to make effective use of that heal skill because it requires you to stick on your target…. which guardians aren’t great at.

Which is why dps guardians aren’t effective in pvp. I’m not even sure why you suggested that offensive guardians are powerful, because they are not. There is a saying, if you can’t hit you can’t crit which means you aren’t doing damage. With no soft cc or mobility, guardian isn’t close to being viable in spvp.

In tPvP where you HAVE to be on the point to be scoring it makes it so the DPS guardian doesn’t need very much CC. There is a vast difference between the hotjoin hero environment and tourneys.

It matters a ton.

jportell.2197:

Balefire.7592:

jportell.2197:

Aza.2105:

jportell.2197:

DeathPanel.8362:

jportell.2197:

DeathPanel.8362:

jportell.2197:

DeathPanel.8362:

Dynnen.6405:

If someone sees us CASTING our meditation, they run from us. Since we don’t have any soft CC…they get away and we have a useless heal.

Please, please, please, get off this idea of Guards ‘holding points’ and letting people get away from us. Its gotten old and there are many problems with the Guard. Fix it quickly.

This change in no way “magnifies problems”. First of all you don’t need to take the heal if you don’t like it.

Secondly you are talking from purely a pvp/wvw perspective, and ignored pve applications.

This skill is very good for meditation guards in pve since it is a meditation and will trigger additional heal and fury as well as very good sustain against multiple mobs due to the life gain on damage.

If you run meditations anywhere but open world… i just…

You can run meditations anywhere. Most roaming guard builds are meditation based. And I’ve already stated before, the heal is not required. You can use whatever heal you were using before so this whole post about how the new heal “magnifies” problems makes no sense.

The heal magnifies the problem because in order to get the most use out of the heal you have to do damage. In order to do damage you need to be on your target. In a pvp environment where people don’t come running at you and stand there for you to bludgeon them so you can heal you need to have good gap closers and good snares…

Guards have a laughable amount of either. You can not have a class with only one legitimate and very predictable ranged weapon, have terrible gap closers.

As for those dismissing med guards in pve, bads with no imagination will always be bads with no imagination.

This thread is about the heal so why woudn’t i mention the heal? Also if you use meditations in pve content such as dungeons fractals or world boss fights…. You are possibly the most selfish guardian in the game… Meditations are great for DPS pvp, open world pve, solo wvw. Thats it. Using it in zergs, dungeons, boss fights etc… There are so many great and “imaginative” builds that use other things besides meditations because they provide group support something meditations completely lack.

You can successfully run meditations in any aspect of the game. I’ve ran mediations exclusively for awhile with my static group just to test viability and if it affected my group. It did not.

Then you had someone else providing all the reflects? In things such as dungeons Meditations are completely lacking group synergy…. No fire fields which means less might, no reflects at all… No party wide boons, no stability, no group condition clear….

Viability=/=optimal…. While meditations are great in theory. In group play such as dungeons they are eh…

Saying meditations are great in all aspects of the game is like saying I am going to run clerics in every aspect of the game just because I know its viable.

Would you like to trade them for a Necro’s Corruptions? Or maybe trade heal skills with Signet of Vampirism?

Necro corruptions are one of those things that is actually very strong in a pvp environment but not so much in a pve environment. And the new necro signet I can’t comment on because I don’t have a necro that I play regularly. I can’t see it being too amazing though… But this is about how guardians new heal skill shows just how hard it is to make effective use of that heal skill because it requires you to stick on your target…. which guardians aren’t great at.

Which is why dps guardians aren’t effective in pvp. I’m not even sure why you suggested that offensive guardians are powerful, because they are not. There is a saying, if you can’t hit you can’t crit which means you aren’t doing damage. With no soft cc or mobility, guardian isn’t close to being viable in spvp.

jportell.2197:

The guards that have used them almost never switched the skills for the appropriate fights, had no blast finishers, no team buffs, nada. At high level fractals the last thing that is useful is a meditation guardian. They are on par with the five signet warriors.

This is your problem, associative thinking. You are applying your experience to every meditation guard that might exist in pve. Every meditation guard won’t have blast finishers, every meditation guard won’t switch out skills, every meditation guard won’t have team buffs etc. You see what I’m saying?

Your past experience is causing you to apply this to everyone. And that is just wrong. Which is why I told you in my prior post to you, your experience is simply limited to you.

If you were saying meditations won’t work in pvp, I probably would agree with you. Pvp is dynamic, but when you talk about dungeons….dungeons. Everything is scripted, the exact same thing each time.

jportell.2197:

Aza.2105:

jportell.2197:

DeathPanel.8362:

jportell.2197:

DeathPanel.8362:

jportell.2197:

DeathPanel.8362:

Dynnen.6405:

If someone sees us CASTING our meditation, they run from us. Since we don’t have any soft CC…they get away and we have a useless heal.

Please, please, please, get off this idea of Guards ‘holding points’ and letting people get away from us. Its gotten old and there are many problems with the Guard. Fix it quickly.

This change in no way “magnifies problems”. First of all you don’t need to take the heal if you don’t like it.

Secondly you are talking from purely a pvp/wvw perspective, and ignored pve applications.

This skill is very good for meditation guards in pve since it is a meditation and will trigger additional heal and fury as well as very good sustain against multiple mobs due to the life gain on damage.

If you run meditations anywhere but open world… i just…

You can run meditations anywhere. Most roaming guard builds are meditation based. And I’ve already stated before, the heal is not required. You can use whatever heal you were using before so this whole post about how the new heal “magnifies” problems makes no sense.

The heal magnifies the problem because in order to get the most use out of the heal you have to do damage. In order to do damage you need to be on your target. In a pvp environment where people don’t come running at you and stand there for you to bludgeon them so you can heal you need to have good gap closers and good snares…

Guards have a laughable amount of either. You can not have a class with only one legitimate and very predictable ranged weapon, have terrible gap closers.

As for those dismissing med guards in pve, bads with no imagination will always be bads with no imagination.

This thread is about the heal so why woudn’t i mention the heal? Also if you use meditations in pve content such as dungeons fractals or world boss fights…. You are possibly the most selfish guardian in the game… Meditations are great for DPS pvp, open world pve, solo wvw. Thats it. Using it in zergs, dungeons, boss fights etc… There are so many great and “imaginative” builds that use other things besides meditations because they provide group support something meditations completely lack.

You can successfully run meditations in any aspect of the game. I’ve ran mediations exclusively for awhile with my static group just to test viability and if it affected my group. It did not.

Then you had someone else providing all the reflects? In things such as dungeons Meditations are completely lacking group synergy…. No fire fields which means less might, no reflects at all… No party wide boons, no stability, no group condition clear….

Viability=/=optimal…. While meditations are great in theory. In group play such as dungeons they are eh…

Saying meditations are great in all aspects of the game is like saying I am going to run clerics in every aspect of the game just because I know its viable.

None of this happened to me. Perhaps your bad experience with meditations is limited to you.

In regards to reflects, just switch the skill when its needed. I don’t see the big deal. Also, dungeons aren’t hard, stop making it seem like they are.

Are you going to say zerging world events is hard too and requires optimal builds? The only thing in this game that requires being optimal is spvp. Pve is anything but that.

jportell.2197:

DeathPanel.8362:

jportell.2197:

DeathPanel.8362:

jportell.2197:

DeathPanel.8362:

Dynnen.6405:

If someone sees us CASTING our meditation, they run from us. Since we don’t have any soft CC…they get away and we have a useless heal.

Please, please, please, get off this idea of Guards ‘holding points’ and letting people get away from us. Its gotten old and there are many problems with the Guard. Fix it quickly.

This change in no way “magnifies problems”. First of all you don’t need to take the heal if you don’t like it.

Secondly you are talking from purely a pvp/wvw perspective, and ignored pve applications.

This skill is very good for meditation guards in pve since it is a meditation and will trigger additional heal and fury as well as very good sustain against multiple mobs due to the life gain on damage.

If you run meditations anywhere but open world… i just…

You can run meditations anywhere. Most roaming guard builds are meditation based. And I’ve already stated before, the heal is not required. You can use whatever heal you were using before so this whole post about how the new heal “magnifies” problems makes no sense.

The heal magnifies the problem because in order to get the most use out of the heal you have to do damage. In order to do damage you need to be on your target. In a pvp environment where people don’t come running at you and stand there for you to bludgeon them so you can heal you need to have good gap closers and good snares…

Guards have a laughable amount of either. You can not have a class with only one legitimate and very predictable ranged weapon, have terrible gap closers.

As for those dismissing med guards in pve, bads with no imagination will always be bads with no imagination.

This thread is about the heal so why woudn’t i mention the heal? Also if you use meditations in pve content such as dungeons fractals or world boss fights…. You are possibly the most selfish guardian in the game… Meditations are great for DPS pvp, open world pve, solo wvw. Thats it. Using it in zergs, dungeons, boss fights etc… There are so many great and “imaginative” builds that use other things besides meditations because they provide group support something meditations completely lack.

You can successfully run meditations in any aspect of the game. I’ve ran mediations exclusively for awhile with my static group just to test viability and if it affected my group. It did not.

This game will end up just like Lineage 2 in regards to performance. Even 10 years later after the game came out, no hardware can run it has 60fps constantly since its so poorly optimized.

In 5 years people will still complain about gw2 performance, even with cpus and gpus that dwarf what we have today. Anet really needs to optimize the game engine to take advantage of multi cores and gpus. But I don’t feel they will ever do this.

If they do not punish skyhammer farmers and greatly reward the players who leveled genuinely. It only sends the message to players that you might as well exploit when you have a chance because Anet won’t punish you and the people doing it the hard way won’t get any type of reward for doing things right.

Really its the wrong message to your community Anet. Looking at back at pvp ranks, I do not know what you guys were thinking with the rank system. The grind to level 80 is almost unreachable, the rewards were non existent. Yet you had a dedicated bunch who played spvp anyway, who played honestly and at the end skyhammer farmers got more than them.

Obtena.7952:

Nick.6972:

Is it just me or is this “Zerker only or leave” thing only on official forums?
Almost 1000 hour total playtime and no one has ever asked me to ping my gear.
Weird.

Pretty much, because it’s the only place that gives competitive PVE players a voice. Gear matters little when it comes to successful PVE encounters. We all know this.

This is exactly right.

Hurtappl.6405:

Idk but when I tried shattered aegis it hit for almost 1k!
I thought it was reasonable and when you think that you can give 5 people aegis from 1 guardian then..
1000 X # of people who have your aegis on them X number of enemies it hits

It could be a max AoE group burst of 25k if 5 people jumped on 5 other people who all had shattered aegis on them

but maybe that is just my aegis .. I run full zerker so not sure if that makes a difference

Maybe a 1k crit???

With 5 people I suppose its not that bad, however gw2 doesn’t have that type of team coordination most of the time. In gw1 I could definitely imagine something like that being useful for spikes.

Hurtappl.6405:

Just some random matches I decided to record.
I didn’t edit the audio so you get to listen to what I was listening to on Pandora, and yes that means the commercials too! Lucky You! Enjoy

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iE7U8_guX6I

Watch some of my other videos for some WvW roaming. I don’t have very many.. ..YET!!

I’ve been running scepter/torch on and off for many months now. I initially tried it just for giggles. I rarely seen anyone use scepter or torch, I wanted to experience why. I was surprised that each weapon was relatively good. Torch hits extremely hard. Scepter is good if you use it like a melee weapon instead of range.

Its a fun build, but I’m not sure how it would do in a real tournament setting.

Dynnen.6405:

Aza.2105:

Amins.3710:

The damage doesn’t justify the EXTREMELY long cooldowns.

10% more dmg on burning targets will always trump this trait: ALWAYS.

What I find interesting is when you compare pure of heart and shattered aegis. They are basically polar opposites. What I noticed is that when it comes to damage, anet is very modest in their approach. However with healing, they seem to be much more generous. Pure of Heart has been buffed twice, both times increasing the healing ability on the trait.

I’m sure people will not agree with it, I know I don’t agree with it but I feel Anet wants guardian to use healing power and be a totally defensive power house. In pve this of archetype really isn’t needed.

1000 – 1200 heal on aegis block vs 200 – 400 damage on aegis block…its completely stupid. You have certain classes that can literally do everything, and in some cases better than Guardian. And yet we’re still pigeonholed into what we are because of nerfs that were done by people who didn’t understand the game at beta. Its an extremely poor approach to a development cycle when MASSIVE changes are done like that. But they are completely fine with buffing warriors for 6 months straight…it’d be a funny joke if I hadn’t had invested this much time into Guardian.

Guardian players are definitely being pigeonholed, no doubt. Maybe they want healing power to be the primary stat for guardian, but fail to wonder why its not? I’m just guessing.

Amins.3710:

The damage doesn’t justify the EXTREMELY long cooldowns.

10% more dmg on burning targets will always trump this trait: ALWAYS.

What I find interesting is when you compare pure of heart and shattered aegis. They are basically polar opposites. What I noticed is that when it comes to damage, anet is very modest in their approach. However with healing, they seem to be much more generous. Pure of Heart has been buffed twice, both times increasing the healing ability on the trait.

I’m sure people will not agree with it, I know I don’t agree with it but I feel Anet wants guardian to use healing power and be a totally defensive power house. In pve this of archetype really isn’t needed.

John Corpening.9847:

Hey Guys,

A week ago we were ready to cut ranks. Last week, due to our discussion on the CDI thread, we decided to keep them.

Right now we are trying to determine in what form we are going to keep ranks and how they should be balanced so attaining the rank of dragon is something that you have a reasonable chance of achieving and not a quest that you pass on to your children and your children’s children.

Because we agree with most of you that ranks are too difficult to attain and because it was a very easy change for us we also decided to give players a bonus to players in Solo and Team Arenas.

I’m sorry you didn’t get a response sooner but we didn’t want to jump the gun and say yes or no to this thread. What you are asking isn’t something that we can just turn on so it would have to come in a build later if we decide to do it. At the moment we don’t have a plan to retroactively award points for wins but many of you have brought up some interesting reasons for it so it is something we will take into consideration when we are discussing how to adjust ranks.

Thanks again for your feedback.

John

Skyhammer farmers have made a mockery of spvp ranks. The players who genuinely earned their ranks through soloq and teamq, should be greatly rewarded for their time and effort.

fadeaway.2807:

I hope Anet didn’t waste too much time on pointless changes like this and the trashy new heal.

I wish someone could provide some mathematical numbers, to show how bad shattered aegis is.

300 dmg every 40secs if you don’t use virtue of courage.
300 dmg every 90secs if you use virtue of courage. But then you can use renewed focus again to recharge it.
300 dmg every 60 secs when you run retreat.

I dunno, aegis seems hard to track. But either way, to get the most out of it you would have to somehow chain aegis, which is impossible. I don’t understand why they didn’t give shattered aegis high base damage with a 30sec cd. Even then, it still wouldn’t be better than fiery wrath.

Dear Anet,

Can you revert this skill, even though I never used it. Looking at the damage to new one makes me emo. And it makes me see how much better the old one was lol.

Makes me wonder what were they thinking with this change? How can 300 dmg be beneficial for anything?

Rigel.3092:

Painbow.6059:

in short no you can’t

Spoken from one inhabiting lala-land?
Guardian can be one hell of a tank.

Part of the definition of tanking is the ability to hold aggro. Being able to actually mitigate attacks is the other part of it. While guardian can mitigate attacks fairly well through dodges, blocks, blinds and the occasional direct hit. Gw2 does not support the traditional aggro mechanics.

There is a aggro system put in place, however there is no guarantee that you can keep the mobs from attacking your team mates. Here is how the aggro mechanics work according to wiki:

For a neutral (yellow outlined) NPC the player must attack first to gain its attention. The aggro table of a hostile NPC changes dynamically depending on a number of factors, in order of importance :

closest target to them
who is dealing damage
top damage dealers
who is using a shield / has more toughness and overall armor
others (see Tanking tactics below)

Taken from: http://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Aggro

Block <—> There are unblockable attacks in game
Dodge <—> Weakness is suppose to be the counter, but I don’t feel it works well
Evade <—> Nothing exists in game that counters evade frames found on skills
Protection <—> Boon strip

Evade is powerful because there is no counter. I don’t expect this to ever change, spamming and passive gameplay is encouraged in gw2. When you compare Evade to the protection boon, evade comes out on top. It has a much lower downtime, much more consistency and has absolutely not counter available.

How many patches in soloq end up 4v5 for you?

For me I’d say roughly 35%. There seem to be three primary causes:

1. The player is afk
2. The player rage quits
3. The match starts with just 4 players on one team

Choice #3 has been the number one reason in my experience, followed by #1 and of course #2 last and most rare.

Imo, there shouldn’t even be a active leaderboard until issues such as undermanned teams are addressed.

Ashley Segovia.8276:

Hi George Steel,

Your system should definitely be able to handle Guild Wars 2 with higher framerates than that. I’d like for you to submit a support ticket and contact us directly so we can further assist you one on one with this problem and hopefully narrow down the cause.

Anet needs to start a OMFG (operation: make faster game).

foofad.5162:

Aza.2105:

foofad.5162:

Aza.2105:

Painbow.6059:

You could probably conjure up some kind of viable healing build but it’s the fact that people use AH and ignore damage multipliers as well. In good parties anything but zerker is not needed. But in pugs you could probably mix some zerker with some healing with battle presence ect and be useful (picking up damage multipliers aka 10% while endurance not full). But some guards just stick to GS with cleric gear and think they are useful using AH

What skills/traits are most players using primarily for healing?

I don’t know about most people but I run 10/0/0/30/30 Hammer/Mace+x. SYG, PF, and third utility is a wildcard for whatever situation.

I was curious because when examples of cleric guardians are used they seem to be very polarized. Honor maxed out, staff, signet of mercy, writ of the merciful, basically taking every last healing skill/trait and nothing else.

But when you look at zerker users, they don’t run 30/30/0/x/x. I’m saying the zerker builds that others advocate aren’t taking every last trait that has to do with damage. Its a mix of offense and defense. So why are cleric build so polarized? Could a cleric build be designed similar to its zerker counter part? Were as there is a intelligent picking of traits and skills while allowing the user to take advantage of healing power.

I think it’s polarized because of the all-or-nothing attitude that most of the vocal elements on the forums have about the game. If you aren’t full berserker, you’re wearing training wheels. The logical flipside of that is that if you aren’t full cleric, maximum healing power then you’re doing it wrong.

The reality though is that full, 100% maximum healing power necessitates completely negating your damage. It’s kind of like saying, “Well, I have this umbrella, so I’m just going to stand in the storm indefinitely instead of walking to the front door.” Sure, you don’t die. But you also don’t get anywhere fast. Since the objective of the game remains the same – complete the dungeon, or beat the other team, or whatever – you have to allow yourself room to actually accomplish the overarching objective. So while it’s logical to maximize healing power given that that tactic works for DPS builds, it’s ultimately unhelpful.

It’s a lot of work minmaxing a damage build that can heal, or a healing build that can do acceptable damage. Not everyone wants to do the work. It’s a lot easier to just stack modifiers and berserker gear, or stack healing power.

Yep thats what I mean.

Stacking enormous amounts of healing power and having too healing traits/skills doesn’t get you anywhere. This is why I brought up alternatives, such as using healing skills such as faithful strike, healing breeze etc. While trying to focus on maintaining respectable damage.

From what I’ve gathered overall, the culprit to the adversity to cleric gear isn’t with the gear itself. But a combination of cleric and the trait build. If you take mace of justice with a cleric set, that alone puts you at around 1300+ healing power without honor. Leaving points to utilize in a line like radiance to obtain right handed strength. The 30% crit damage should come in handy for a cleric user, since they have no critical damage to begin with.

Also despite its clunkiness, healing breeze is one of the strongest ally heals guardian has. With 1300 healing power, it heals allies for around 6300hp.

Cat Has Ducks.1982:

My point is zerkers do try to do maximum damage. We only have 5 points that go into defense generally, which is into honor for Perma vigor. Everything else goes into trait lines for DPS. The only non dps trait is master of consecrations generally, but even that adds dps with our wall of reflect….

So, then my point is, why shouldn’t we polarize Cleric guards to being the max healer they can be. (Since healing is useless in general, might as well go full retar….)

Alright, I see what you are saying. And I can’t necessarily disagree with it. However, I do feel its not such a black and white comparison. There are no healing modifiers, there is only healing power and a variety of different skills/traits that apply healing in different ways.

So wouldn’t it be better to avoid having a overabundance of healing? Many of the healing traits can be substituted with weapon skills and healing skills. Faithful strike can replace wit of persistence and healing breeze could be used if you really want to heal allies. The mace trait can be picked up to avoid having to put so many points into honor, leaving points to be placed else where. This is just my perspective on the matter.

Also, I think its better to say that healing power is far behind in pve. But in spvp its very good.

Cat Has Ducks.1982:

Aza.2105:

30/30/0/x/x. I’m saying the zerker builds that others advocate aren’t taking every last trait that has to do with damage.

30/30/0/x/x is less dps than 10/30/0/x/25. The build I posted would have anywhere from 20% to 30% damage modifiers as opposed to that crappy 30/30 build which would only bring more power and 5% more damage to GS without those sweet virtue modifiers….. That’s a terribad build.

I’m not sure what you are getting at.

foofad.5162:

Aza.2105:

Painbow.6059:

You could probably conjure up some kind of viable healing build but it’s the fact that people use AH and ignore damage multipliers as well. In good parties anything but zerker is not needed. But in pugs you could probably mix some zerker with some healing with battle presence ect and be useful (picking up damage multipliers aka 10% while endurance not full). But some guards just stick to GS with cleric gear and think they are useful using AH

What skills/traits are most players using primarily for healing?

I don’t know about most people but I run 10/0/0/30/30 Hammer/Mace+x. SYG, PF, and third utility is a wildcard for whatever situation.

I was curious because when examples of cleric guardians are used they seem to be very polarized. Honor maxed out, staff, signet of mercy, writ of the merciful, basically taking every last healing skill/trait and nothing else.

But when you look at zerker users, they don’t run 30/30/0/x/x. I’m saying the zerker builds that others advocate aren’t taking every last trait that has to do with damage. Its a mix of offense and defense. So why are cleric build so polarized? Could a cleric build be designed similar to its zerker counter part? Were as there is a intelligent picking of traits and skills while allowing the user to take advantage of healing power.

Painbow.6059:

You could probably conjure up some kind of viable healing build but it’s the fact that people use AH and ignore damage multipliers as well. In good parties anything but zerker is not needed. But in pugs you could probably mix some zerker with some healing with battle presence ect and be useful (picking up damage multipliers aka 10% while endurance not full). But some guards just stick to GS with cleric gear and think they are useful using AH

What skills/traits are most players using primarily for healing?

foofad.5162:

I run a heal build with roughly 70% of the dps of a Zerk build. Best of both worlds. Just takes some min-maxing. No one has ever looked at me and said “I can tell you aren’t berserker.”

Then again, I don’t think I’ve ever played with someone who cared enough to bring it up in the first place. The only place I’ve ever been told I’m wrong is the forums.

You are correct. This only exists on the forums.

fadeaway.2807:

Look at pve fights in wow for example. Ones which don’t have enrage timers.

Do you see groups of 25 tanks and healers? No, because being over cautious and bringing more heals than necessary wastes everybody’s time.

In 25 man raids there would be at least 2-4 tanks, maybe 4 healers. One healer and sometimes tank per group, the rest were dps. In dungeon content, 1 tank and healer. I haven’t really played since 07, so things might of changed.

jportell.2197:

Aza.2105:

jportell.2197:

Aza.2105:

Its ironic, defensive builds were quite good in gw1 pve. Now its just the opposite.

Its not that they aren’t good you could prolly do every dungeon in this game with groups of nothing but full tanks for each class… It will be somewhat irrelevant though because of how bad healing power scales in the game and how well dps scales.

Absolutely.

However, I’m convinced that Anet feels healing power and defensive stats like toughness are in a good place.

From a PvP stand point absolutely. However in pve as long as mobs have the ability to one shot you regardless of your toughness you’re just better off doing more dps

Yep.

In that regard I felt pve in gw1 had more depth, because the mobs used the same skills players had and not one shot mechanics. So it gave encounters more variety.

jportell.2197:

Aza.2105:

Its ironic, defensive builds were quite good in gw1 pve. Now its just the opposite.

Its not that they aren’t good you could prolly do every dungeon in this game with groups of nothing but full tanks for each class… It will be somewhat irrelevant though because of how bad healing power scales in the game and how well dps scales.

Absolutely.

However, I’m convinced that Anet feels healing power and defensive stats like toughness are in a good place.

Its ironic, defensive builds were quite good in gw1 pve. Now its just the opposite.

urieldhynne.2743:

Why hammer #5 cant be used while moving like warrior hammer #4? In the warrior was a QoL change, why guardian hammer #5 dont? Is pretty annoying stop to use it.

Hah! Are you crazy. This change will never happen. Guardian is suppose to be the slowest and most sluggish class in the game, because they are so powerful. A change like this would make it so guardian actually has some sort of mobility.

Remember Anet wants guardians to port to a spot and expected to stay there and fight it out. Even if there is no one around and in worst cases, they want to damage you outside your spot.

Finnway.2183:

Aza.2105:

Would it be better to just pick up mace of justice to get +5% dmg and +250 healing power? And use points that you would put into honor else were?

Honor is the core of the build. You need it for Writ of the Merciful and Battle Presence. If you’re not going to go into Honor why are you running Cleric?

The mace trait might be better, but shield skills have a longer cooldown so I picked that instead.

Well its 250 free healing power points, without having to go into honor. So technically it frees up a lot of points that could be put else where. Despite the shield having long cooldowns, I don’t feel the trait its worth it. But that is just my opinion.

Do you feel there are other alternatives to healing through honor? There is faithful strike, which provides a neat party heal and scales relatively well with healing power and there symbol of faith, virtue of resolve (active) and healing breeze.

Finnway.2183:

Aza.2105:

Can’t cleric gear users gain access to blinds, vulnerability and damage modifiers too?

In order to trait to get those damage modifiers you’re gimping your build. Even though the build is suboptimal in PvE the trait synergy still makes sense. link to build

Would it be better to just pick up mace of justice to get +5% dmg and +250 healing power? And use points that you would put into honor else were?

Can’t cleric gear users gain access to blinds, vulnerability and damage modifiers too?

icewyrm.5038:

Cat Has Ducks.1982:

I’m curious. What does a heal build look like? Like 0/0/10/30/30 using doge rolls and healing breeze? Added boon duration for regeneration and so VOR passive works on teammates?

Yeah, basically. Without food or the hp signet you heal for around 700 health a second from shared resolve, symbol healing and permanent regeneration on mace. You bring boon duration roons (i’m icewyrm@gmail.com

I don’t have the game in front of me atm, but iirc you heal your party for around for 3k from healing breeze, 1500 from dodge rolls, and 500

Healing breeze tool tip is bugged.

It actually heals allies for around 6.3k with high healing power.

Ludus Rex.1562:

Does blocking one attack REALLY warrant a 90s cooldown? Would be fine at 45 seconds, IMO.

Yep, way too high.

Cat Has Ducks.1982:

icewyrm.5038:

Having 1 competent healing power/boon orientated guardian per 5 man group makes runs smoother and faster in most situations, in my experience.

I would certainly recommend carrying a full berserker alternate set for the various dps-check mechanisms which do exist, but these aren’t as common as you seem to be implying.

I’m curious. What does a heal build look like? Like 0/0/10/30/30 using doge rolls and healing breeze? Added boon duration for regeneration and so VOR passive works on teammates?

I have never even thought about what a heal build consist of lol

Like this? http://gw2skills.net/editor/?fUAQNAW5elcgyC3EyMEg4ES2DRKBRQsHY0HtRXFSIA-jAyAoNBZqBE9JwZxioxW3KiGrqBTpSEV7SKiWdQAfD-e

I think that is too extreme. Even with all of those healing skills you still wouldn’t be able to be a traditional healer anyway.

Anyhow, Anet obviously disagrees with everyone about cleric set on guardian. Zealous Blade now scales with healing power, Pure of Hearts scaling with healing power has been buffed. They are telling us, go healing power if you want the most out of guardian.

Hey everyone,

I thought it would be a good idea to express our opinions of the Dec.10th patch in one single thread. What I’d like everyone to do is give their opinion of all the changes we received along with their overall opinion of the state of the class.

1. Zeal V – Shattered Aegis. Damage instead of Burning.

Negligible change, in fact the original was probably stronger than this. But I figured the numbers would be low since its a adept trait and Anet doesn’t want guardian doing dps. Its no surprise why Jon never got back to us when fellow players asked him how much damage the new shattered aegis would do.

2. Zeal VII – Zealous Blade. This trait now scales with Healing power (2%.)

A narrow sighted change, here we have a dps tree which is forced to take healing power in order to make a skill scale. It should of scaled on power, not healing. No one is going to have healing power with a zeal build.

3. Zeal XII – Kindled Zeal. Increased conversion from 10% to 13%.

This is a arrogant change by Anet, we’ve explained to them that guardian has no viable condition setup. They even know this, yet they continue to give us condition damage modifiers and skills. As before the change, this trait will go unused.

4. Radiance V – Searing Flames. Reduced cooldown from 20s to 10s.

Good change, but still hindered by the fact that it procs even when the target has no boons. This trait is more useful in pvp than pve however.

5. Radiance X – Powerful blades. Increased damage from 5% to 10%.

A buff, not a needed one. But it doesn’t overall change anything about the class. I’m sure players who love their 1h will appreciate the change.

6.Valor V – Retributive Armor. Increased conversion rate from 5% to 7%.

A buff, but it feels directionless. No one ever complained about this trait, neither does it bring forth new builds for guardian.

7. Honor VI – Pure of Heart. Increased scaling with Healing power from 25% to 40%.

Another directionless buff, players don’t take pure of heart because there are better traits. And that you never see the benefit of the trait. The initial lose of aegis usually means the guardian is at full hp. So the heal is wasted.

8. Virtues VIII – Supreme Justice. Number of attacks going from 4 to 3.

Once again Anet is enforcing their vision of a burning guardian upon us. Something that does not exist, something they themselves stated they can’t even get to work in internal testing. I wonder why?

9. Symbol of Swiftness: This skill now applies 4 seconds of swiftness per pulse, rather than 8 seconds if you have no swiftness and 1 second if you have swiftness.

Debatable. I can’t make a comment about it without it being totally ignorant since I wasn’t a avid user of sos nor am I a mathematician were as I can compare numbers.

Overall

I feel the developers have a complete disconnection with the guardian class and its problems. They stated that the goal was to open up more offensive guardian builds. But this patch has done nothing of the such. None of the changes even remotely offer solutions to core guardian problems. The changes actually do the opposite, they show clearly why guardian can not have viable dps builds nor condition damage builds.

The class has no mobility, no cc, one offensive condition. So how does the developers expect a emergence of something when the basic principles of such do not even exist in the heart of the class?

How did they expect guardian to take advantage of the new heal with no cc or no mobility? How did anet expect kindled zeal and supreme justice changes to be useful when the class only has access to burning? These are questions we probably won’t get answered because they themselves have no concrete answer for it.

I feel the state of the class remains the same as it since the beginning. Which is sit on a point while other classes sit outside of your positioning superiority and damage you.

According to anets internal testing, there will be the emergence of the power guardian and condition guardian in the future. Though, they don’t want to give guardians too much damage.

I’m sure internal testing was against golems and anet did not take into consideration what happens when guardians have to try to stay on targets with no cc or mobility.

akamon.2769:

so you’ve tried it, Dynnen? at work now so can’t try new patch yet.

can’t say it anymore. i understand they wanted to heal to be a meditation so it could benefit from the medi traits.. then imo, it REALLY should have picked up ALL meditation characteristics, namely being instant. that would have been the only thing selling it for me.

again, i have my reseverations since i haven’t actally tested the heal yet, but just speculating and drawing from what others have said about the skill now.

if you DO get it off though, are the heals based on damage worth it?

No they are not. Mainly because you have to make up for all the health while you casted it.

1. Its hard to cast the skill in battle, because you will take heavy damage during that interval.

2. So now you make up that health lost with a almost 4k heal.

3. Afterwards you have 6 seconds to make up the rest of the health lost. If you are in a 1v1, litany is very bad. If you are in a situation were there is more than one person, more than likely you will either die quickly or they will just cc and you and waste litany.

It probably has some decent usage in wvw. Maybe in pve. But in spvp I don’t see it. Shelter is still the better choice.

These are good and I can agree to every one of them.

Obtena.7952:

If that was the case, why did he even approach the community asking if ‘his child was ugly’?

Not like I’m going to get it, but I would love an explanation/summary of what they did with the feedback we gave them because it didn’t seem to influence changes for this patch … even though we were DIRECTLY solicited for that feedback with the guise it could change things going into this patch.

I can’t even begin to think why they would bother asking for feedback but didn’t listen to a thing anyone said.

One thing that is very clear that I understand about the class, is they are not suppose to dps what so ever. Anet even clearly stated this.

I think this is why I’m disappointed by the patch. Since they stated that they felt this would be the emergence of the power guardian. But this isn’t truthful at all. Its impossible for a power guardian to exist without significant changes to the class. None of which I see happening. I feel the class is much more enjoyable when you just play it the way they intended, heals and support with damage coming in last.

Harbinger.8637:

Aza.2105:

Harbinger.8637:

I’m enjoying it a lot with med builds. You just need to know when to use it correctly.

I would love to hear about your experiences with it.

It’s a great heal to use with med a build. Without a med build then I agree it’s not that good. Also this isn’t like Shelter or SoR were u pop it at the last second, you have to know when to use it. If you use it at the right moment it’s very powerful.

I’m trying to understand exactly what you mean. When do you feel the right time is? Pre casting it before a fight seems to be adverse to its purpose, since pre casting it before engaging means you are at full hp.

Casting it while in battle is very risky, a one second casting time and then you have to make up all of that lost hp by landing blows. Preferably aoe, since single target damage doesn’t restore enough health.

What are your thoughts exactly?

Harbinger.8637:

I’m enjoying it a lot with med builds. You just need to know when to use it correctly.

I would love to hear about your experiences with it.

Arken.3725:

Alright, after playing about 10 matches of Tpvp, I can honestly say that Lithany of Wrath has to be one of the worst healing skills I’ve ever seen. It’s too easily countered, the base heal is probably the smallest of any healing in the game, it has a long cast time and you’re giving this heal to a profession which has enough trouble sticking to their target to do any meaningful damage.

Bingo!

Warrior and Guardian should get their new healing skills switched.