Guild Wars 2

MercenaryK.4180:

Positioning is a problem when you’re in the front?

This is exactly the problem.

Bamboula.6579:

Aza.2105:

You ignored what I wrote to you. Its a AMD bug, which seems to only affect the r9 280x/7970 series. I have the r9 280x card and I experience it as well. No matter what driver I use the bug is still there. Initially I thought the card needed to be rma, but then I found this:

https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/support/tech/Flickering-fractures-with-Radeon-7970-card/first#post1513575

There were other users posting the same issue. All of them had the 7970 card. The reason why it affects the r9 280x is because its only a 7970 revision. Today I decided to join amd forums and submit the bug. Hopefully a tech support reads it and send it to the guys who code the drivers so it can be squashed.

I used your picture, since it shows very well what occurs. I didn’t have any on hand personally. Anyhow you can find the thread here:

http://forums.amd.com/game/messageview.cfm?catid=443&threadid=169434&enterthread=y

I didn´t ignore your post, I was just hoping to find a better solution before I accept alt tabing all the time But now it seems I have to. Your examples are quite convincing that it´s a problem with the 7xxx chips. Many of the examples in the thread are very similar to what I experience.

This one f.e.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=sJrcXakkGLw

This happens to me from time to time. But then there are bigger artifacts like the one I posted in the screenshot. They disappear when I move the camera and sometimes they even produce a shadow ingame!

The last days I was very displeased as I was thinking that my card has a malfunction and I would have to make a RMA. On the other hand I installed a few DirectX 9 games, played them for hours and hours without any problem and also ran furmark stress-test many times. Now your post makes me calm down a bit. So here the first thank.

Then my second thank for forwarding this issue to AMD.

But I think it is also working needed on Arenanets side. When this is a problem happening to many 7xxx chips, it means, that it exists for a longer time now. Then after the rebrand of the 7970 chips it will apply to even more people. Here in germany the demand on the r9 280x is very high for 2 months now, they are out-of-stock nearly everywhere, no matter which manufacturer.

So for me it´s a tough decision between a RMA without a clear evidence, where I am tending to exclude a malfunction of my card, and leaving GW2 as I am very PvP/WvW oriented and such failures take me at least 3 seks for tabbing, where my enemy will kill me. I think GW2 will lose this(((((((

Your gpu definitely isn’t faulty. If you look at the thread from gw2 guru, someone else thought the same thing. They sent their card in for a rma and when the new one returned it had the exact same bug in gw2.

My r9 280x is brand new, it has no problems in any other game. The Radeon 6970 was my previous card and I’ve never seen the bug happen during the time I had it. So it leads me to believe it just affects the 7xxx series of cards for whatever reason.

The bug can’t be repeated, it seems to be very random.

Here is another thread I found, take a look at the card type:

https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/support/tech/Flickering-Planes-Surfaces/first#post2170416

sobe.4157:

Aza.2105:

Bamboula.6579:

zerk.9701:

That looks like a driver issue I have never had a problem with this game with my AMD card.

First thing to do is make sure you have the direct X 9 updated.
http://www.microsoft.com/en-us/download/details.aspx?id=34429

Down load the newest version of the non beta AND CCC http://support.amd.com/en-us/download

Use a driver sweeper to remove all the old driver and traces of it. Then install the new download.

If you still have problems go to the performance on CCC and up the power to +20 this is needed sometimes for high factory overclocks on cards.

Well,
I updated my DirectX 9 but I already have the newest version. My Catalyst drivers are the officially newest but I will search for an older one the next days.
I also tried to play the game in fullsreen window but it didn´t help.
I switched the power in the CCC to +20 and it seems to help a bit. The graphic failure happen less often. Don´t know if I can switch it to +30 or +40. I will give it a try later when I can play again.
Anyone else having an idea? Maybe the tech support? Any known troubleshooting with AMD cards?

You ignored what I wrote to you. Its a AMD bug, which seems to only affect the r9 280x/7970 series. I have the r9 280x card and I experience it as well. No matter what driver I use the bug is still there. Initially I thought the card needed to be rma, but then I found this:

https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/support/tech/Flickering-fractures-with-Radeon-7970-card/first#post1513575

There were other users posting the same issue. All of them had the 7970 card. The reason why it affects the r9 280x is because its only a 7970 revision. Today I decided to join amd forums and submit the bug. Hopefully a tech support reads it and send it to the guys who code the drivers so it can be squashed.

I used your picture, since it shows very well what occurs. I didn’t have any on hand personally. Anyhow you can find the thread here:

http://forums.amd.com/game/messageview.cfm?catid=443&threadid=169434&enterthread=y

Mind citing this “known issue” with these cards outside of the gw2 forums? I’d be interested in reading the article or posts relating to “alt tabbing”.a

Look at the second post, and look at what card he uses:

http://www.guildwars2guru.com/topic/55463-graphical-artifacts/

Edit: Seems it affects 7xxx series in general.

Bamboula.6579:

zerk.9701:

That looks like a driver issue I have never had a problem with this game with my AMD card.

First thing to do is make sure you have the direct X 9 updated.
http://www.microsoft.com/en-us/download/details.aspx?id=34429

Down load the newest version of the non beta AND CCC http://support.amd.com/en-us/download

Use a driver sweeper to remove all the old driver and traces of it. Then install the new download.

If you still have problems go to the performance on CCC and up the power to +20 this is needed sometimes for high factory overclocks on cards.

Well,
I updated my DirectX 9 but I already have the newest version. My Catalyst drivers are the officially newest but I will search for an older one the next days.
I also tried to play the game in fullsreen window but it didn´t help.
I switched the power in the CCC to +20 and it seems to help a bit. The graphic failure happen less often. Don´t know if I can switch it to +30 or +40. I will give it a try later when I can play again.
Anyone else having an idea? Maybe the tech support? Any known troubleshooting with AMD cards?

You ignored what I wrote to you. Its a AMD bug, which seems to only affect the r9 280x/7970 series. I have the r9 280x card and I experience it as well. No matter what driver I use the bug is still there. Initially I thought the card needed to be rma, but then I found this:

https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/support/tech/Flickering-fractures-with-Radeon-7970-card/first#post1513575

There were other users posting the same issue. All of them had the 7970 card. The reason why it affects the r9 280x is because its only a 7970 revision. Today I decided to join amd forums and submit the bug. Hopefully a tech support reads it and send it to the guys who code the drivers so it can be squashed.

I used your picture, since it shows very well what occurs. I didn’t have any on hand personally. Anyhow you can find the thread here:

http://forums.amd.com/game/messageview.cfm?catid=443&threadid=169434&enterthread=y

Mikau.6920:

The problem of the shield is its insane cooldowns. They should decrease the cooldowns by 5 on both skills or put the shield trait to adept line.

Thats part of the issue, the main issue is that shield skills are very situational. And aren’t useful outside of spvp. If you look at warrior’s shield skills they are useful in all aspects of the game.

Shield skills need to be redesigned to have a universal appeal. I doubt anet will do it, but you’ll never know.

Brutaly.6257:

The above would make all skills usuable as dps tools in both pve and pvp. Reducing the spam.

And frankly hammer in wvw and pvp is the least “chain reliant” weapon we have. And ofc if 3-5 could be used in a dps rotation it would also contribute to a less spammy gameplay.

I wouldnt mind it it also was combined with shorter cd, our weaponskills has absurd cds tbh.

Edit, the damage of mb should be increased in line with the increased cd and the damage from SoP added. So its a boost to our burst and aoe capability. With increased i mean perhaps 1sec, just so 2 h mastery contributes with added dps when traited.

I see I see.

Makes sense.

Brutaly.6257:

yepp, and decreasing the swing time with aoe on the third step on the chain would be a huge buff.

I wouldn’t like that change at all. I feel there is just too much auto attack spamming in the game already. Unless your idea lowers the cds of #3, #4 and #5.

I want to make it clear, that I’m not disagreeing with you on hammer being boring.

Brutaly.6257:

Move symbol of protection to mighty blow. So when you apply mighty blow you trigger the combofield that is already placed and plants SoP. Adjust cool down.

Keep the aoe on the third step of the chain but reduce the swing time on the third hit and adjust dps accordingly. Keeping dps intact on the hammer chain. Untraited 3 svings per mb and traited 2 svings per mb for max dps.

This would solve the issues with covering combifields but more important it would make it so 2h mastery actually increases dps on the hammer, mighty blow would be a part of the dps chain.

Problem solved.

Make it possible to move while dropping ring of warding and make it a fire field.

Make zealots embrace a projectile finisher and buff damage so it has a place in a dps rotation.

Buff damage on banish so if fits into a dps rotation.

Now the utter boredom of using hammer in pve would be turned into something fun.

Increasing MB cooldown would be a severe nerf to pvp.

The only thing they have said about client side optimizations is “we are working on it”. Very vague response. More than likely they aren’t overhauling the engine to benefit from multi cores and gpus.

Bamboula.6579:

Hey there,

I just bought a new PC and I am quite disappointed with it in GW2. The FPS are pretty good but i am frequently getting graphic failures in WvW amd PvE. When it happens i can fix it by switching to desktop and then back into the game but that´s not a solution i can play with.
Does anyone know a better solution?
Here are a few facts about my PC
GPU: Asus r9 280x Top
CPU: i5 4670k
RAM: 8 Gb 1066 MhZ
Catalyst version: 13.11 beta
OS: Win7 prof.
PSU: bequiet! E9 480W

Regards
Bam

This is a bug with AMD gpus. You fix it by alt tabbing and going back into game. Afterwards it should be fixed.

The problem isn’t on your end, the issue is that gw2 is optimized poorly. Your fps is typical. The game tends to be cpu limited since its essentially a single threaded game. For modern cpus this is a issue since they all have multi cores. Something which gw2 doesn’t really take advantage of.

So I wouldn’t worry about doing a fresh install, updates etc. Because its not your pc causing the issue.

You guys are missing the point. Aion is not comparable to GW2. Why? It has been released worldwide. Gw2 has only been released in NA/EU. So it has less revenue because it hasn’t been released in many regions. If you want to compare numbers, you have to look at all of those games NA/EU numbers only. You would notice that all of those games: Lineage, Lineage II, Aion etc do absolutely horrible in western regions.

So there is nothing to worry about, if GW2 is keeping up with games that have been released worldwide, then its doing very well.

foofad.5162:

The major problem with rune and sigil based conditions is that there just aren’t enough stacks to make it worthwhile. Tormenting runes only give two stacks, and only when you heal, which is 128~ dps tops, if they keep moving. Bleeding or torment sigils are another 100-200~ dps tops. A Force sigil will do that, and isn’t dependent on critical hits, and it can’t be cured. So eh.

Thats just sad. Thanks for the info though.

Has anyone decided to try out superior rune of tormenting and sigil of torment with guardian burning builds? I was curious if it could help with guardians problem of not having a second damaging condition.

They should make tomes like engineer kits. But nerf them to accomodate that change.

Lets take a look at Guardian’s utility.

I’ll rank utility from the most used to the least used.

1. Shouts
2. Meditations
3. Consecrations
4. Spirit Weapons
5. Signets

Shouts are probably the most versatile and balanced utility guardians have. They benefit allies, they remove conditions when traited for them and they have relatively low cooldowns. Out of all the utilities these are the ones I see guardians use the most.

Meditations are probably the most second used utility. With the recent changes to them, they are more attractive. While they do not provide much group utility, they provide guardian with more offensive capabilities.

Consecrations are very odd, they are on very long cooldowns with the exception of purging flames and wall of reflection. The biggest issue with them is, that there is no stun breaker on consecrations. So this makes building a triple consecration build very hard, unless you take Indomitable Courage and Shielded Mind. Giving consecrations a dedicated stun breaker would potentially open up more builds.

Spirit weapons are among the weakest of guardian utilities. Not many people use them and for a good reason. You give up everything to use them only to be rewarded with them dying instantly to aoe. Traits are scattered among three different trait lines, forcing players to be pigeonholed into a build. There are too many traits for spirit weapons and they could do well being consolidated so that they are only in one tree.

The spirit weapons themselves are poorly designed. Extremely low hp, mobility, utility, damage. There is absolutely no reason to take these over shouts, meditations or consecrations aside from the sometimes used shield of avenger. Out of the four spirit weapons bow of truth is the worst one, it does nothing of value to assist the player. Its condition removal is slow, unreliable and its healing does not scale with healing power.

Spirit weapons cooldowns are much too long and the casting times are long as well. The durations are short. Which puts guardians into a awkward position, you either have to summon them before a fight which makes the duration shorter, or you can summon them in battle which makes you vulnerable to attacks.

Signets in my opinion are the worst of guardians utilities. How many players have you seen use a signet build? Probably not many. Aside from signet of judgement, the rest are sorely lacking. A condition damage signet when guardian doesn’t have a condition build? Bane signet is clunky due to the cast time. Signet of Mercy is absolutely horrible. And here is the most interesting part, the devs give a trait to remove conditions when you use signets.

Its short sighted design, remove one condition when you use signet of mercy? That takes 3 seconds to cast and has 2min+ cd. How is that worth it? With bane signet and signet of wrath you have to prematurely use them to remove CC. It makes no sense. The only signet that inscribed removal works well with is signet of judgement (and signet of resolve but its not utility) . Why? Its instant and its a defensive signet. Inscribed removal does not work well with offensive signets or signet of mercy due to its long cooldown and cast time.

To summarize, out of all of the available utility only 3/5 are commonly used. Jon says he wants to open up more possible builds. Perhaps if guardian had viable signets and spirit weapons then we would see more builds emerge. Signets need a overhaul, spirit weapons need the changes seen to ranger spirits. The cooldowns, casting time are too long, the survivability of them are too poor. There are just too many spirit weapon traits scattered through out the trait lines.

I believe by fixing the two utility types I named, it would open up a world of new possible guardian builds. If anyone wants to add or invalidate what I have said feel free. I’m open to all perspectives, negative or positive or those who agree and disagree.

Keenan Sieg.1493:

Starscream.6498:

Aza.2105:

Bobby,

Hold the line audio is bugged for human male and female. I think it might be bugged for all races. One question though……is guardian shouts not being heard by other players a bug too? Or is it intentional?

Don’t hear it on my Charr either, I think it’s same for all races. I am wondering about the second question you presented as well, though.

To reiterate what Bobby was saying, both the female and male sylvari lines were recorded incorrectly, so the decision was made to not include that line for any race until they can be fixed. The second issue concerning Guardian shouts not being audible to other players is something that we’re investigating.

Awesome. I’ve been looking for a official answer since launch. Thanks a lot. I really hope both are fixed. Hearing guardian’s shouts will definitely help allies to know what boons they have on them.

akamon.2769:

and yes, good point, Aza. to me it always made sense that it shoulda have been that way. that would add quite a bit of utility to the Guardian class. as it stands, it’s melee or “waste” of a trait, almost.

I forgot to add, it would require permeating wrath to apply to the active portion of voj too. When the game first came out and I was trying experimenting with new builds, I was surprised that permeating wrath only worked around the caster and it didn’t work when activating voj.

Currently for what it does, its not worth it. It changes voj from a single target, ranged skill into a pbaoe. So you are just trading one thing for another, instead of enhancing it. It definitely should be a adept trait unless they change it.

Bobby,

Hold the line audio is bugged for human male and female. I think it might be bugged for all races. One question though……is guardian shouts not being heard by other players a bug too? Or is it intentional?

akamon.2769:

random thoughts.. if they lowered or changed the effectiveness of searing flames (remove one condition when you burn foe). then paired it up with supreme justice. this could be decent for AoE boon stripping in WvW situations. you’ll just have to find a way to sustain or not do much damage. as it stands…

the fact that it is a grandmaster trait is the only allure it has as a GM trait for me. does that make sense? when in actual fact i feel it could maybe be a master trait tops.

I think it would be worth being a GM trait if the it turned voj into a aoe around your target instead of the caster.

Cop conversion chart should be EXACTLY like pov. I have no idea why its not. But currently the way cop works is you end up with at most 2-3 boons. Since most of the conditions convert to the exact same boon. There is not even a conditon—> aegis conversion with cop and not to mention the durations are very very short compared to pov.

Amins.3710:

Nerfing VP will destroy Glassier builds that do not take any combination of our current meta in WvW / PvP: 30 in Valor or 15 in Honor

End of Story.

GET US OUT OF THESE 2 TREE’s…. We’ve been saying it since beta…

Do this, then a swap of VP & EP would be completely justified.

I agree with you to a extent. With the current state of guardian, nerfing vp would destroy tons of builds. However this points to a very valid concern, that guardian has a over reliance on vp.

When you remove vp it magnifies defective designs with the class. Which are the normal complaints we see: low health pool, no mobility and no cc. In order to nerf vp they will have to buff other areas to compensate. For example, there is a 90% reliance upon vp for mitigation. It would have to be nerfed to a 30% reliance but the other 60% is allocated in other areas of mitigation like aegis, block, protection up time, blinds, weakness and healing.

Its very doubtful that Anet will increase guardian’s health pool or give mobility. CC is possible though.

zerk.9701:

PS2 also runs better on Intel and it’s not to say games only use a single core but more like you see 1 core taking a massive load with the other cores taking less. That’s why I stated the single core performance.

And as I stated above I’ll take my 3 generation old i5 2500K over anything AMD can produce in the next few years.

Out of all the games that are out you might be able to show maybe one benchmark where a AMD processor will beat a Intel i5. With the Intel having a lot slower clock speed.

Nope, most games are coded to be single threaded. PS2 was the same. Except until now, thanks to the PS4.

http://www.playstationlifestyle.net/2013/08/05/the-ps4s-big-challenge-is-its-amd-chip-that-heavily-relies-on-multi-threading-says-planetside-2-dev/

zerk.9701:

Their will be no special optimization for AMD that would be a major waste of resources and man hours. If you buy a inferior product then you get inferior performance. If you buy a 8 core work processor why would you think it would perform good when single core performance is what counts? For the new AMD processors coming out Intel could not produce anything new for about 5 yeas and still lead in performance.

The new 9590 5gh processors are a joke. 220 Watt draw and 3 motherboards that they recommend ouch.

I have my i5 2500K overclocked to 5gh with a Vcore of 1.27 that’s 137 watts and pretty much this sums it up http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=otCpCn0l4Wo

We don’t live in the age of single core cpus anymore, its not AMDS fault that Anet decided to create a graphically intense game that doesn’t take advantage of multithreading.

If AMD cpus are inferior why is it after SOE made planetside 2 multi threaded that AMD cpus equal and in many cases outperform intel equivalents?

From what I understand it would take AMD cpus a whopping 200% overclock to match Intel cpus in non AMD optimized apps and games. The problem isn’t that AMD is bad, the problem is there is zero optimization for 8 cores, which results in AMD cpus trying to compute work loads like a intel cpu would.

I don’t foresee Anet making any significant changes to their engine to make it multi threaded. In fact, one can assume that they believe getting 15fps is acceptable and fine.

purgatoryz.6038:

A guardian shouldn’t have to rely on dodges to mitigate damage. Not only is dodging a generic, clkitten mechanic but it doesn’t really fit the mantra. Maybe we need moooaaar Aegis!

So what do they rely on then? Tanking hits like what is found in the traditional mmorpg? Blocking one attack every 30 seconds? What you are saying doesn’t really make sense.

Thief has way better mitigation than guardian, the only thing that stops thief from becoming a bunker is that their form of mitigations aren’t conducive to capturing nodes.

In old mmorpgs there is a saying about tanking, “The best form of mitigation is to not be hit at all”. A completely negated attack is always better than mitigation via absorption. And thief has that, spammable evades, a variety of escape mechanisms, stuns, dazes, immobilzes.

In comparison guardian has no cc, no escape mechanisms, just a variety of heals, and dodge. I would count aegis but its far over-rated for what it does. Its the boon that is the least available to players.

yawa.5103:

kailin.4905:

I’ve tried on both AMD and an Intel i7. I was rather disappointed as I thought the i7 would be a huge increase in performance….it wasn’t. Ive accepted the game has serious issues that need to be addressed and have stopped trying to make something work better that never will.

It definitely isn’t our hardware. If you are running an AMD FX 6 core or 8 core series CPU you should be fine. It is 100% lack of optimization.

I previously benched a few titles and posted them above with my rig ( FX 8350 at 4.8 GHz, GTX 670 boost disabled through bios with a forced 1228 MHz oc and +290mhz on the ram, Samsung 256 GB SSD, and 8 gigs of 1866mhz ram) to give measuring stick to what kind of performance high end AMD users should be getting in GW2, and from those benches I can prove AMD hardware for this game is not the issue here, the issue is in lack of proper CPU optimization. So basically the games frame rate drops and general inconsistency is 100 % on Arenanet in this case.

And for additional giggles I picked up FFXIV Friday, and cranked the settings all the way up to see if I could find another CPU bottle necked , inefficiently threaded, MMO with performance issues, and was pleasantly surprised to find how well coded that game is. My FX 8350 loves it, and in six hours and a few heavily populated fate events, the lowest I dropped in frame rate was 55 fps and averaging 110fps.

Like you just found out by making the jump, I cannot stress enough how little switching to an i5 or an i7 will help you in this game ( though it may help you in others so that has to be considered), so don’t waste your money at this point. Instead we should start an organized movement to pester and petition the devs to at least try to optimize this game for multi-threaded processors ( or at the least, a 64 bit client, as I’ve stated before if WoW can release one four years after release, Arenanet has zero excuses to not at least try to do so), and therefore addressing the biggest glaring issue in this otherwise fantastic game.

Pester them. Get on it.

This guy is absolutely right. +1

Jax.5261:

You guys realize that shield 4’s protection was nerfed by a few seconds right? You’re suggesting breaking it again because you don’t feel it’s strong enough?

It was only nerfed in spvp.

P.S

Elementalist’s earth shield has better #4 and #5 skills than guardian shield lol. It would be nice if shield of judgement pulled 5 targets to you.

Silver.8023:

What if shield #4 also applied aegis?! :O That’d be pretty neat. It’s a simple addition of block to the shield which a lot of people have requested whilst retaining the philanthropic nature of the Guardian and promotes a fairly decent spread of trait synergy (On block traits, all aegis traits and AH). I wouldn’t mind a few seconds shaved off the cooldown either but if they added aegis to it the current cooldown might be warranted. I dunno, up to them.

I really like shield #5 where it is. It’s such a useful skill, the only real drawback is the cooldown.

I had the same idea, I actually wrote it in my post to Jon in the proposed changes thread. But ultimately I changed it because I foreseen how players would probably start to complain about guardian and blocking.

Do you feel giving shield of judgement aegis would upset the balance of the game?

Shield is a weapon that doesn’t have much use outside of spvp. I feel its something that will be hard to change, I can see how shield can become OP with the wrong changes.
Its probably best to start with opinions on why shield isn’t used in pve and wvw.

I asked this almost a year ago and never ever seen a reply from the devs.

All I wanted to know was: Why doesn’t hold the line have audio? Why can’t other players hear our shouts like warrior?

Thanks everyone!

I had some other suggestions but for whatever reason the forum wouldn’t let me edit my post to add them.

Traits

• Symbolic Exposure: Landing a critical hit against burning targets apply 5 seconds of vulnerability to target and surrounding foes. 1 sec cooldown

• Symbolic Power: Targets inflicted by burning deal 5% less damage to you.

• Focused Mastery: Reduces recharge of focus skills by 20%, also reduces condition duration by 20%.

• Inner Fire: Changed to each time you burn a target you gain Fury for 3 seconds.

• Perfect Inscriptions: In addition of boosting signet passives, it now grants 30 vitality for each signet you have equipped.

• Vigorous Precision: Reduced Vigor duration to 2 seconds. Down from 5 seconds.

• Supreme Justice: In addition to causing Virtue of Justice to burn more frequently, you also gain 5 seconds of might every third attack while virtue of justice is active.

• Permeating Wrath: Changed to activate around your target instead of the caster.

Shield

• Shield of Judgement: In addition to providing protection, it now provides aegis for 5 allies in front of you.

• Shield of Absorption: Fixed a bug that causes the shield to sometimes not detonate. Reduced cooldown to 35 seconds.

Torch:

• Cleansing Flame: Reduced the casting time from 4 1/2 secs to 2 1/2 secs.

Can’t edit my post anymore, so I wanted to add one more thing:

• Protector’s Strike: Now applies a 1 sec stun to 5 surrounding enemies upon successful block.

And thanks Relentliss!

Guardian:
Tanky and supportive guardians are in a strong position in many gametypes. We do feel that damage guardians are not as powerful as they could be. While we don’t want guardians to be as strong offensively as some of the other classes (given their powerful defensive abilities) we opened up more offensive guardian builds.

• Zeal V – Shattered Aegis. Damage instead of Burning.
• Zeal VII – Zealous Blade. This trait now scales with Healing power (2%.)
• Zeal XII – Kindled Zeal. Increased conversion from 10% to 13%.
• Radiance V – Searing Flames. Reduced cooldown from 20s to 10s.
• Radiance X – Powerful blades. Increased damage from 5% to 10%.
• Valor V – Retributive Armor. Increased conversion rate from 5% to 7%.
• Honor VI – Pure of Heart. Increased scaling with Healing power from 25% to 40%.
• Virtues VIII – Supreme Justice. Number of attacks going from 4 to 3.
• 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.

Hey Jon,

I decided to re post my perspective of the changes so its in accordance to the guidelines for good feedback you posted.

Zeal V – Shattered Aegis: Its a positive change, better than what we have now. I don’t expect it to have big damage since it is a adept trait.

Zeal VII – Zealous Blade: On paper it sounds like a good change, however all this will do is force guardian to use healing power even more, thus the repeatable theme we see “trading survivability for damage”. This trait is in the zeal line, imo it would be better if the healing scaled with power. So it can help the player focus on damage. So instead of scaling with 2% healing power, it could be 1% power.

Zeal XII: No matter what the conversion rate is changed to, the trait still is useless. For any other class it would be a powerful trait, but for guardian its not due to having one condition: burning. It would be more beneficial if it was changed to convert power to vitality instead.

Radiance V: Excellent change, makes sense. This is one of the changes I’m looking forward to trying.

Radiance X: Not needed, but if you guys want to buff it go ahead. I feel more dynamic things could be done with the trait, similar to what was done with mace. For example +5% damage and also increases vitality by 100.

Valor V: I don’t think anyone will feel this change, its rather on the weak side.

Honor VI: A change I’m confused about, the trait has been buffed once before and still no one takes it. Just as pointed out by a fellow player the bad thing about this trait is that you never see the heal due to aegis being removed when you first enter the fight with full health. My suggestion is make it a delayed heal or change it from aegis removal to each time you block but give it a respectable ICD so its not abused.

Virtues VIII: Interesting change, but I don’t feel guardian will be affected by it. Guardian isn’t a condition damage class, so because of this the change ultimately seems rather weak.

Symbol of Swiftness: A buff a nerf rolled into one. This change will only further hamper guardian’s mobility.

My thoughts on what Guardians problems are

There seems to be a misunderstanding in regards to what guardians need to open up more builds. Its not damage, any damage buff won’t change a thing. Guardians have several problems: lack of mobility, lack of cc, lack of health.

The lack of health limits the amount of builds a guardian can have, with no escape mechanisms, no mobility, no cc, it makes running builds without vitality and other defensive skills risky.

The lack of cc makes being a melee class a nightmare, if you can’t stick to your target to do damage then you are a ineffective melee class. Like wise, guardian has poor ranged options. So there is no compromise for their weaknesses. Either they need the ability to stay on targets or keep targets near them. Or their ranged options need to be buffed.

The lack of mobility is related to what I wrote above.

My proposed changes:

Traits:

• Glacial Heart: Lower the ICD to 10 seconds, Reduce chill duration to 2 seconds. It now works with all weapons.

• Pure of Heart: Heal delayed by 3 seconds. Merged with courageous return in Valor

• Kindled Zeal: 10% of power is converted to vitality

• Zealous Blade: This trait now scales with 0.50% power.

Mace:

• Faithful Strike: Changed to be a cleave, casting time reduced to 1/2.

• Symbol of Faith: Cast time changed to 3/4

Sword:

• Zealot’s Defense: Can now be used while moving, fixed so the projectiles have a better chance to hit targets.

• Flashing Blade: Range increased to 900

Hammer:

• Ring of Warding: Can now be used while moving

• Zealot’s Embrace: Cooldown reduced to 10 seconds

Great Sword:

• Binding Blade: Leash ranged increased to 900

Avelos.6798:

Aza.2105:

Avelos.6798:

azizul.8469:

Avelos.6798:

azizul.8469:

try this :

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QkfIFP0g2xY

Considering that’s for Battlefield 4, which is a completely different game and is more GPU bound than CPU bound, I doubt that will help much.

it is applicable to any CPU-bound game, and GW2 is a CPU-bound game…

I know GW2 is a CPU bound game. BF4 is more GPU bound.

Hes right, gw2 is only cpu bound due to bad optimization. If it was multi threaded then it wouldn’t be.

Guild Wars 2 is plenty multi threaded. Just AMD processors aren’t up to handling it as much as Intel processors are.

Its not multi threaded, its pretty much in the same situation planetside 2 was in before they made the engine multi threaded. If it was multithreaded then amd would be getting similar or exceed the performance of equivalent intel cpus.

Avelos.6798:

azizul.8469:

Avelos.6798:

azizul.8469:

try this :

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QkfIFP0g2xY

Considering that’s for Battlefield 4, which is a completely different game and is more GPU bound than CPU bound, I doubt that will help much.

it is applicable to any CPU-bound game, and GW2 is a CPU-bound game…

I know GW2 is a CPU bound game. BF4 is more GPU bound.

Hes right, gw2 is only cpu bound due to bad optimization. If it was multi threaded then it wouldn’t be.

Lucentfir.7430:

Aza.2105:

Lucentfir.7430:

Aza.2105:

I don’t feel its the end of the world if they nerf it, however there has to be compensations in other areas. Maybe mobility? Or CC? Who knows.

But anything that is perma and spammable is not good for the game.

This is true, though, what I thought that was always offset to balance and reward was that since we’re melee we have to be in range and keep whacking at the person that’s kiting us while taking damage from condi, direct damage and all. They don’t like that the trait is easily accessible that’s fine but there’s a line here. if you move it up into masters or grandmasters minor then you’re pigeonholing guardians into that trait line. If they rework it there’s a great chance they will wreck survivability since selfless daring would give less heals. Funny thing too is this would place Warriors as better sustainer then we are, because the only thing we would have left after nerfing our vigor is protection. and blocks with Aegis. Retaliation was nerfed without compensation for our DPS in the past.

It only feels like the class is being pigeonholed because there is a over reliance upon vigorous precision.

The first thing Anet will have to do is remove the dependency guardian has upon it, then work from there. I felt from the beginning of the game dodging was abused, because of endurance restoration. From the looks of it, other forms of mitigations with cooldowns such as block, evades and protection should of been the main sources of mitigation. With dodge being the last and most powerful form of mitigation, a complete negation of incoming damage when timed right.

From the beginning they should of put the dodge mechanic in check, but they let it go on for a year. Classes doing infinite dodges, heck in pvp people dodge for absolutely no reason at all. Why? Probably because its so easy to recover endurance. If there was no way to recover it and you really only had 2 dodges to use back to back, then I bet people would use it more wisely.

it wouldn’t be a problem if the class didn’t have very low base HP, low mobility, Melee based and reliant on boons. Protection can do wonders for you but it’s not enough to survive with today’s classes, Condis can still eat through it, and with low HP easy to burst unless you spec into honor. Engies, Rangers, Warriors, Mesmers, Necros, Thieves and great eles(current ele) all can kill a guardian with ease. You can go Zerker guardians and win some. But if there’s a vigor change and it gets reworked it’s going to kill the build since you’d die in a heart beat, after two dodges(Even with the blocks after it’s over you’re going to die and it’s a dps loss and pressure is lost from your target.)

it makes sense for mesmer to get the vigor nerfed because for image creation it makes a defensive trait into a very offensive one at the same time creating so many clones to shatter with even though i don’t support nerfing mesmer vigor, it’s something to point out.

More skilled opponents there’s always a reason to dodge, but people who dodge for no reason will die regardless, because it’s easy to count how many times one has dodged and within a window of time you have because they have vigor.

My fear is that they’ll nerf our vigor trait/rework which is vital to survival of the guardian class as a whole, and we’ll easily end up as free kills even more, because we’re easy to kite, we have poor mobility, low HP. Look at it this way we’ll be a melee based Necro without Death shroud, 8k less HP, no soft CC to stick, and meh damage. if it’s supposedly a better change, fine. I’ll play on my warrior for a majority of the time, and let all the other guardians see how much it’s going to hurt the class.

Thats what I meant when I said dependency. Outside of dodging, guardian’s survivability would be sub par. Its true mesmers have clone spam which is a form of defense indirectly. Guardian doesn’t have such a thing, they are very straight forward.

Lucentfir.7430:

Aza.2105:

I don’t feel its the end of the world if they nerf it, however there has to be compensations in other areas. Maybe mobility? Or CC? Who knows.

But anything that is perma and spammable is not good for the game.

This is true, though, what I thought that was always offset to balance and reward was that since we’re melee we have to be in range and keep whacking at the person that’s kiting us while taking damage from condi, direct damage and all. They don’t like that the trait is easily accessible that’s fine but there’s a line here. if you move it up into masters or grandmasters minor then you’re pigeonholing guardians into that trait line. If they rework it there’s a great chance they will wreck survivability since selfless daring would give less heals. Funny thing too is this would place Warriors as better sustainer then we are, because the only thing we would have left after nerfing our vigor is protection. and blocks with Aegis. Retaliation was nerfed without compensation for our DPS in the past.

It only feels like the class is being pigeonholed because there is a over reliance upon vigorous precision.

The first thing Anet will have to do is remove the dependency guardian has upon it, then work from there. I felt from the beginning of the game dodging was abused, because of endurance restoration. From the looks of it, other forms of mitigations with cooldowns such as block, evades and protection should of been the main sources of mitigation. With dodge being the last and most powerful form of mitigation, a complete negation of incoming damage when timed right.

From the beginning they should of put the dodge mechanic in check, but they let it go on for a year. Classes doing infinite dodges, heck in pvp people dodge for absolutely no reason at all. Why? Probably because its so easy to recover endurance. If there was no way to recover it and you really only had 2 dodges to use back to back, then I bet people would use it more wisely.

I don’t feel its the end of the world if they nerf it, however there has to be compensations in other areas. Maybe mobility? Or CC? Who knows.

But anything that is perma and spammable is not good for the game.

One of the reasons bunker guardian can bunk is because of selfless daring. If vigor is nerfed then so will selfless daring. I do not approve of anything being perma such as vigor, however I suspect guardian would have trouble being able to bunk after its changed.

Fermi.2409:

sirsquishy.8531:

But, since the world is in favor of Intel

I wouldn’t say that. Intel is just currently better fitting the needs of consumers given how software is programmed to run these days.

This is exactly it. I suppose you can say that programmers are living in the past. During the days when cpus had single cores and it was all about raw speed. A vast majority of software and games still are primarily single threaded. Guild Wars 2 is a example of this, which is why we have performance issues.

More than likely Anet will not change this, they may add features such as the ability to disable particles so that we have a boost in fps. But re-writing the entire game engine so its multi-threaded? No. Unless they decide to bring gw2 to the ps4 and xbox one, then they would be forced to make the engine work with amd 8 core cpu.

Lonewolf Kai.3682:

Anet wants us to be mobile buffbots that sit in the back of the lines while everyone else does the action! I called it first!

All joking aside, I think it might be time to hang GW2 up for awhile. I’m not liking the direction the devs have been going over the past few months with it.

lol nah, I think this might be true. What else could it be? Obviously guardian isn’t meant to land damage on players consistently (no soft cc!) and they aren’t meant to be ranged damage dealers (staff and scepter suck for it!). The only thing that is repeatedly told to us is guardian is a big presence every where. So what is left? Supporting others, making them better just like what a traditional healer does. Just give buffs and heals to other classes so they can kill stuff.

So to a degree I think they are buff bots.

Behellagh.1468:

Aza.2105:

Behellagh.1468:

The game only has around 3 cores worth of work to process, so all the extra cores in an FX-8350 is great for things also running but it doesn’t help the game.

AMD FX cores are inherently slower compared to Intel cores in terms of performance. The design was meant to compete only when both an FX-8xxx and Intel i7 are running 8 threads at 100%. When that’s not true, when Intel is only running one thread per core, it significantly outperforms a single FX- core (30-40%)

GW2 has some significant problems in extremely complex environments, like Lion’s Arch, and when there are other players around, the more players, the lower the performance and it drops off quickly.

I’m sure if you go into the open world, say the Wayfarer Foothills, go up on the wall of Twinsper Haven and look out over the icy plains toward where the maw event runs, your frame rate will be impressive at your max settings. It’s just during maw it will plummet when you are there. The CPU simply gets bogged down and without it feeding the video card, frame rate suffers.

This is a misunderstanding, you can’t compare amd’s core speed to intel. In fact you can’t compare the two cpus at all. They are totally different architectures. The only thing that is factual is that the way Anet coded Guild Wars 2 takes advantage of intel architecture and not amd. Its the real reason why amd cpus perform so badly in comparison to intel.

If GW2 was coded for Amd architecture then intel would be slower, since its architecture is very different. I suspect with the coming of the PS4 and Xbox One that the roles will slowly reverse. Then intel users will begin to complain of poor performance in games.

Actually you can. It’s called benchmarking.

I’m not comparing clockspeed, just performance and when both an FX module and a single Core i3/i7 core are running a single thread, Intel will out perform it. And yes it’s due to the underlying architecture. I’ve gone over that time and time again. Short version AMD choose to implement two lower performing cores to compete with a single Intel hyperthreaded core. Great when an AMD Module and Intel HT core are assigned two threads but when only assigned one, AMD can only devote one core to that thread while Intel can devote the entire core instead of splitting it’s performance between two threads.

Then you can’t compare them, one is relies strictly on multi threading in order to perform the other does not. And there aren’t a lot of heavy multi threaded software or games to give a direct comparison.

Avelos.6798:

Well I’m never going to see the difference because I don’t want to play that game lol

The first picture is on live with no amd 8 core optimizations. The second is the pts with amd 8 core optimizations. Big difference right? Same spot, same settings, but a extraordinary difference between the fps.

Avelos.6798:

I tried to play Planetside 2. That game can go blow it for all I care because I can’t sign in to it no matter what I do. I’ve sworn of Sony Entertainment Online.

Its not about liking it, its just about seeing for ones self what happens when developers actually make a game that benefits amd architecture. On the pts when I was speaking to other players, the intel users said they couldn’t see much of a difference. The amd users however were saying the samething I was. That on live they had 20-30fps but now they are at 70fps+ on average. Big difference.

Avelos.6798:

Aza.2105:

This is a misunderstanding, you can’t compare amd’s core speed to intel. In fact you can’t compare the two cpus at all. They are totally different architectures.

It already happens all the time. They may be different architecture and they do perform totally different in Guild Wars 2.

Aza.2105:

The only thing that is factual is that the way Anet coded Guild Wars 2 takes advantage of intel architecture and not amd. Its the real reason why amd cpus perform so badly in comparison to intel.

I don’t necessarily think Guild Wars 2 is coded for Intel Processors. I believe that it just so happens that Intel has what it takes to run the game to as good as it can get. It’s already obvious that AMD lacks in single thread performance anyway.

Aza.2105:

If GW2 was coded for Amd architecture then intel would be slower, since its architecture is very different.

Quite a number of titles I’ve seen coded for AMD I’ve seen played better on an Intel system, but those titles aren’t MMORPGs either so I guess this statement is kinda… just there.

But I don’t believe there’s really any comparison anyway. Intel CPU is just better for this game, period. My laptop’s intel i7 3630QM out performs my AMD FX-8350 in most areas that matter in Guild Wars 2. 3.2 GHz quad core with HT against a pseudo 8 core at 4.1 GHz (turboing) is pretty bad in my opinion.

Yes because the programming, it has nothing to do with AMD cpus being bad. I’ll copy and paste a wonderful quote I found that explains the differences:

A software setup with data fed in a mostly serial manner favors intel, because intel’s instruction execution protocol for their CPUs are 90% serial data…which means intel chips break down a serial stream of data faster (single threaded performance). AMD’s instruction execution protocol for their CPUs are setup to run parallel streams of data (heavily threaded performance), which most software out right now is not designed to feed data to the CPU in this manner. So, data being fed serially to a CPU designed to run parallel streams of executions is inefficient, and favors one designed for that type of data streaming.

For example…

Picture you’re at Wal-Mart (or where ever), and there are 8 checkout lanes open…the first lane has a line a mile long, and they will only allow 4 of the other 7 lanes to have a line 1 person long. It doesn’t make any sense right? For starters, they’re not even using all of the lanes available, and the ones they are, aren’t being utilized efficiently.

That’s what’s happening inside an AMD architecture FX8350 with current software…

With Intel chips right now…it’s more like the line at best buy…where you have 1 line a mile long, but the front person has 4 different cashiers to go to when they arrive at the front of the line.

So, having 1 line a mile long doesn’t slow them down, they’re designed that way…

However, once information is fed in a parallel manner to the CPU…AMD will have all 8 lanes at Wal-Mart open for business and the lines will be distributed equally with people (instructions for the CPU), but Intel will still have the Best buy type line with 4 people running a cash register…except that now there will be 4 or even 8 lines forming into that one line, which makes things slow down because they are not designed to execute like that.

I hope the analogy makes this very complicated architecture discussion make sense.

I mentioned the PS4 and Xbox One because they are the future of gaming. Which will force developers to finally code their games to be true multi-threaded titles. Planetside 2 is a example of this, since the game is coming to ps4 the developers have been forced to recode their game engines to benefit AMD.

http://www.playstationlifestyle.net/2013/08/05/the-ps4s-big-challenge-is-its-amd-chip-that-heavily-relies-on-multi-threading-says-planetside-2-dev/

Since you have a AMD 8350, download planetside live and test server and test the difference. On live, you will get around 30-40fps but on the test server which has some of the amd optimizations you will get around 80-100fps+. Guild Wars 2 is very similar, the multi threading is poor, essentially non existent. If Anet coded it to be heavily multithreaded then AMD performance would be boosted greatly.

Behellagh.1468:

The game only has around 3 cores worth of work to process, so all the extra cores in an FX-8350 is great for things also running but it doesn’t help the game.

AMD FX cores are inherently slower compared to Intel cores in terms of performance. The design was meant to compete only when both an FX-8xxx and Intel i7 are running 8 threads at 100%. When that’s not true, when Intel is only running one thread per core, it significantly outperforms a single FX- core (30-40%)

GW2 has some significant problems in extremely complex environments, like Lion’s Arch, and when there are other players around, the more players, the lower the performance and it drops off quickly.

I’m sure if you go into the open world, say the Wayfarer Foothills, go up on the wall of Twinsper Haven and look out over the icy plains toward where the maw event runs, your frame rate will be impressive at your max settings. It’s just during maw it will plummet when you are there. The CPU simply gets bogged down and without it feeding the video card, frame rate suffers.

This is a misunderstanding, you can’t compare amd’s core speed to intel. In fact you can’t compare the two cpus at all. They are totally different architectures. The only thing that is factual is that the way Anet coded Guild Wars 2 takes advantage of intel architecture and not amd. Its the real reason why amd cpus perform so badly in comparison to intel.

If GW2 was coded for Amd architecture then intel would be slower, since its architecture is very different. I suspect with the coming of the PS4 and Xbox One that the roles will slowly reverse. Then intel users will begin to complain of poor performance in games.

akamon.2769:

so they want us to stay in one spot and can’t chase or run from others. but they don’t want us to be too strong. they want us to be more supportive and defensive. so they will take away our more notable defensive utilities and traits.

Yup, it doesn’t make much sense. Being stationary is probably the most confusing part imo. How is this beneficial in a highly dynamic game? If you are standing still then what is the point in having a melee weapon when you can’t hit anyone? Why are the range options worse than the melee ones if the class is meant to be stationary?

A lot of the design just doesn’t make sense to me.

Anet needs to follow in SoEs footsteps. They have begun to rework the planetside 2 engine to become a real multi-threaded engine. And the results show, especially for AMD users who were the primary target since the Playstation 4 is a AMD 8 core machine.

Going from 40 fps with my 8350 to 120+ on the planetside 2 pts is jaw dropping. It shows one thing, AMD cpus are more than capable of delivering performance. Programmers just have to endure the daunting task of rewriting their engines to take advantage of them.

I expect if Anet was to make gw2 a real multi threaded engine, that the performance would be very good. Those who average 30-40fps would probably average around doubled that. It would solve a lot of issues, wvw fps issues, world events fps issues etc. But it will take Anet to actually be willing to put in the resources to do it.

The future of gaming will probably be AMD 8 core since its the cpu present in both the ps4 and xbox one.

EnemyCrusher.7324:

Please don’t ruin the synergy between Shattered Aegis and Fiery Wrath!

I personally never heard of anyone who uses shattered aegis.