Guild Wars 2

Merlin Dyfed Avalon.5046:

Step1: play the most unreliable build you can immagine for 4 months.
step2: switch to a viable build and see how you destroy everything you encounter.

Your sig is awesome btw!

Psychogene.6780:

This method definitely works.

Before I was trying so hard to study my opponent and plan my attack with mixed success. After applying this method I can proudly say that I have been winning my fights – and not just winning, but winning in style!

I have further adapted this strategy to use only one hand while the other hand is for celebrations via fist pumps, hi fives and queen’s wave.

Its a bit hard to study your opponent while zoomed out looking at fireworks surrounding your target, all while they have very short animations which are shared by 90% of their skills. But maybe that is just me?

And thanks for your kind remark, I appreciate it.

Mammoth.1975:

1. Use a bad build.
2. A really bad build.
3. Get important stuff dodged.
4. Fail to dodge important stuff.
5. Bunch up so you can get cleaved.

But every class only has one build, are you saying that every other trait unrelated to that build is useless?

I believe that deep down, under all of those particle effects and AI spamming, that there is a bit of team work going on some where.

1. Take as many passives as you can.
2. Take as many AI skills you can.
3. Spam every skill you have off CD, even if you don’t need it.
4. Dodge even when no one is there attacking.
5. Spam aoe with team mates, pretending like you are assisting even though you are hitting another guy next to the guy targeted.

Win

AI promotes unintelligent gameplay.

But then again, gw2 is a unintelligent game. Which is why AI and passive play a enormous part of the game.

Velron.3729:

Ashanor.5319:

forrae.6708:

Falkor.7932:

Lets not forget that Stun and Daze can be stripped as well with a stun-breaker, it immediately cancels the effects of Stun/Daze.

while that’s just fine, there’s a lot of spammable CC’s. warriors that use mace/shield and hammer can chain CC someone for quite some time. most people only use one stunbreak, so if you’re unfortunate to get hit again, the warrior can just faceroll CC’s on you over and over.

the problem lies in the ability to just spam stuns and other CC’s

A warrior using M/Sh H has very limited mobility. The problem lies less in the fact that they can chain CC and more in the fact that you don’t know what to use your stunbreak on for maximum efficiency. There is still massive delay on Earthshaker, the only way to really land it versus a good player is to already have them in CC. Let’s not even talk about Backbreaker, the wind up might as well be a red flag telling you to pop stability, dodge, pop an evade frame. How about those ridiculously long Hammer cooldowns also? I am willing to be they are some of the longest in the game. Not going to bother making sure, it isn’t worth my time. You can check it out though.

Most people don’t even wait to use their dodge to avoid big attacks, let alone properly use their stun break.

Hell most the time people freakin dodge the moment you move toward them just auto attacking….so then you skull crack or w/e them as soon as they are done dodging because they just dodged for no reason at all.

Can you blame them? With all the particle effects going on and the lack of clear animation to some skill, dodge has became more of a instinctive skill than a intellectual one.

If they added cast bars, you would see dodge being better utilize. Until then, you will see player rolling around for no reason at all. Yet another reason why gw2 pvp is epic fail.

Expansive.3716:

JETWING.2759:

Why ilusionist duelist deal more damage than thieve unload?
Why spatial surge deal same dmg than evicerate?
Why mesmer are so hard to kill and hits so strong?

You are a true troll.

You’ve been complaining everywhere about the Mesmer. You’re just upset because you got beat by a Mesmer and didn’t know how to counter

Counters exist in gw2? Are we playing the same game?

Vena.8436:

samo.1054:

In GW1 if you used a knock-down skill on a knock-downed foe you wasted your skill. No such punishment for spam here. You can just spam your kitten and it will stack or take on the effect of the last used CC. So yeah, you don’t need the brain here in this pvp. Just faceroll over your CC skills and you’re good to go.

In GW1 if you got knocked down, you stayed knocked down.
In GW2 if you get spammed with CC, a single stability counters all of it.

The comparison is poor. There are problems with spam, counter-control and control are better when they are about counter play than they are about DR and “oops, your CC failed”.

I disagree, compared to the rate which CC is applied and the abundant amount of skills that apply CC, stability is not balanced in comparison. Only a small fraction of skills grant stability. And some classes have situation access to it.

http://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Stability

But when we look at CC:

http://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Immobilized
http://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Fear
http://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Launch
http://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Knockdown
http://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Stun
http://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Daze
http://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Push
http://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Pull

You can call it intelligent play if you like, but there is nothing intelligent about it. It actually promotes unitelligent gameplay since there is no “messing” up so to speak. A uncoordinated group can successfully lockdown a player.

Lets say if they did use stability right? There are different variations of loss of control that can be applied afterwards. In a organized group, they can simply wait for stability to fade and continue the cc lock down. Or they can boon strip it.

CMF,

Just read your previous two posts, I think they are well thought out.

I can agree with you about signet of judgement, its a very good utility. However my problem is that guardian’s signet build isn’t very good. Out of the four signets we have, SoJ is the best one we have. The other three feel very clunky, primarily due to the long cast time on bane and wrath signet.

I feel anet has created a identity issue with guardian, which stems from a non coherent theme. We are told what guardian is in anet’s class descriptions but how it plays out in real time is quite different from the description.

My analysis is that, if you look at warrior. They are a offensive version of guardian. They have traits to reinforce this idea, lots of high damage modifers, easy to maintain a high crit rate, high mobility etc etc.

With guardian, the class is built around a defensive and support theme. But looking at the traits, many of them do not reinforce thakittens as if Anet randomly played around with the idea, then stopped mid way. Warrior can obtain better stats simply because they have access to better damage dealing traits.

To follow guardian’s theme, I believe we would need access to better defensive traits. Like a interesting trait would be following damage reduction theme, like a passive trait could reduce all incoming damage by 10%.

Another trait could convert power/toughness into healing. What I’m trying to express here is, if we had traits like this, then it would be possible to focus on other stats, which would in turn boost our overall survivability.

Lets say if we could get damage reduction in the radiance tree and healing power in the zeal tree, then valor and honor wouldn’t feel very mandatory. While guardian is suppose to be a boon warrior, I feel that the theme has become diluted over the year.

Protection is suppose to be very important for guardian, yet in pvp it was nerfed across the board. So yes my thought is more passive damage reductions, maybe passive condition reduction traits.

Put them in the weak trees like zeal and radiance. Aegis should be re-evaluated, overall I feel are virtues are weak.

Virtue of courage’s aegis reuse time should be reduced to 30secs, the virtue trait would reduce it further to 20secs.

VoR, passive regen should be increased.

Damage reduction traits should be added to zeal and radiance. Or simply they could buff zealous blade to actually return significant heals.

These are just my thoughts though, nothing I’d say MUST happen. You know?

But I do feel that if we had more traits that focused on defense, then offensive stats would be much more flexible. Meaning we could actually go zerker and rely on passives to sustain the hp.

Diage.6451:

Aza.2105:

Sabull.5670:

Diminishing Returns are close to the worst thing they could add. When you use CC, it needs to work, unless your enemy chooses break it / stability.
Saying DRs are good for a game makes me want to punch your kitten (not cencored).

It would work, when you time it. What you want is for the button mashing CC spam to always work. I disagree, it only promotes unintelligent gameplay, where you don’t think about consequences because there aren’t any.

DR is needed in CC spamming games unless you get what we have now, spamming cc. Players locking down others with chain CC. Hold up, before you even think it requires coordination. It doesn’t because there is no slip ups. With DR CC will require coordination, isn’t that what should be ideal in a team based game?

Anet already did the unthinkable and copied the cookie cutter mmo pvp (spam buttons and cc). Abandoning their own unique and innovative pvp system in gw1. So if they are going to copy and paste then they might as well paste the rest aka diminishing returns.

There is a serious flaw in your argument here.

“….isn’t that what should be ideal in a team based game?”

This isn’t a team based game

GOSH

True True, I can’t deny any of what you said here.

DevonCarver.5370:

Ok I Did It.2854:

I personally would love to see WvW maps made for the zone they are from,

Yaks Bend for example is in the Northern Shiverpeaks, the map should be mountains/snow etc etc, the garrison should be extremely hard to cap/control, whereas camps further out should be easier to take unless protected etc,

Sorrows Furance, was in the Southern Shiverpeaks, yet was underground, a map for this should say have the garrison underground, again difficult to attack, yet supply camps outside on the surface as less difficult.

Crystal Desert, clue is in the name I guess, you see where im going with this,

Personally each world should be different, and the envading world should have to really battle hard for control, something like this would be game changing, and I personally wouldn’t care if it took them 2-3 years to achieve this, but its a time investment problem I guess, as im sure its been looked at.

That is really awesome, but with 51 total servers, that would require more maps than we currently have in the game. Which wouldn’t be feasible in anything shorter than years, several in fact. I’m hoping we can at least start introducing some variety, maybe even different home maps, sometime relatively soon, but this version is essentially unworkable.

I can understand what you mean. That would be hard.

What I imagined is that each team color map still remains as it is now, except it has a different terrain theme. Example:

Red team: Crystal desert theme
Blue team: Shiverpeaks theme
Green team: Forest/Jungle theme

KratosAngel.7289:

Rofl, laughed so much at the amount of stupidity in the thread.
DR is kitten, stability/break stun is much better, makes the game so much more tactical.
In WoW, not control spam ?
Take a rogue, use this CC, this other, he uses trinket, now u use CC 3 then 4 and ha ha he’s dead I’m so good.
Yeah, as if it was not broken …
Keep WoW kitten out of GW2, only take the good things.

Sounds just like gw2, except stunbreaker has taken the place of trinket of the horde/alliance. None of this sounds anything like gw1 btw.

Yaki.9563:

CMF.5461:

Yaki.9563:

Guardians aren’t reliant on healing power. All of your heal skills scale poorly with heal power and AH scales poorly with heal power. You get defensive boons such as protection and aegis which have nothing to do with heal power at all. The only reason you can sort of make healing power work is because you have more tiny heals than other classes so you get more overall contribution from heal power, but by no means are you “reliant” on it.

Let me clarify, our provided game mechanic that was intended to make up for our lack of HP is reliant on healing power. Virtue of Resolve.

That one virtue is supposed to make up for our low HP, and then additional things such as regeneration, altruistic healing, monk’s focus, writ of the merciful, and I’ll even go as far as to say zealot’s blade are supposed to enhance that innate class based regeneration.

VoR alone is not supposed to make up for the low HP. It’s the entire toolkit. VoR, easy access to protection, VoC for aegis, along with all the heals. The baseline value of those heals is more than adequate to make up for the low hp. Else how would bunker guardian work so well without any healing power at all?

He is speaking more so about non bunker guardians. Bunker’s are surviving off mitigation and vigorous precision. So this almost makes valor and honor mandatory.

If you go zeal and radiance, you won’t have enough to survive at all. Its a serious issue, but I would blame healing power entirely.

If you look at the other two classes with the same base hp as guardian then something can be observed.

Elementalist: High mobility and escape ability
Thief: High mobility, escape ability and stealth
Guardian: Just sits there and takes damage

Ele and Thief can buffer their low hp pool by having the ability to escape at will and of course thief has that and stealth.

Guardian on the other hand is forced to stay in and take the damage. But here lies the problem, there is no possible way to buffer that low hp pool other than using the valor or honor tree or perhaps both. Get it?

Sabull.5670:

Diminishing Returns are close to the worst thing they could add. When you use CC, it needs to work, unless your enemy chooses break it / stability.
Saying DRs are good for a game makes me want to punch your kitten (not cencored).

It would work, when you time it. What you want is for the button mashing CC spam to always work. I disagree, it only promotes unintelligent gameplay, where you don’t think about consequences because there aren’t any.

DR is needed in CC spamming games unless you get what we have now, spamming cc. Players locking down others with chain CC. Hold up, before you even think it requires coordination. It doesn’t because there is no slip ups. With DR CC will require coordination, isn’t that what should be ideal in a team based game?

Anet already did the unthinkable and copied the cookie cutter mmo pvp (spam buttons and cc). Abandoning their own unique and innovative pvp system in gw1. So if they are going to copy and paste then they might as well paste the rest aka diminishing returns.

CMF.5461:

I hear you Aza, but as you said, guardians are very reliant on healing power and yet the game doesn’t want us to be, and the meta doesn’t use healers/support for the most part in pve, pvp on the other hand we still perform well in a defensive role.

Still it is frustrating as it is so contradictory, not to say we can’t be offensive. We see tons of people showing off what guards can do on the offensive side, but we pay a bigger price the others I feel.

I personally play the game to experiment, to see if I can discover something new. Guardian can trait to be dps, but I feel its niche. It takes guardian to proc multiple sources of damage to reach the damage potential of another class.

For example, shield of wrath+ smite condition, whirling wrath is a powerful combo. But it takes aligning them perfectly to achieve the damage another class can do just by spamming one skill over and over.

In regards to healing power, I feel it should be removed. Maybe replaced with something that converts are standard stats into healing power.

Sure they say they didn’t want dedicated healers in gw2. But guardian seems VERY close. So I don’t feel that anet are sticking to their values much.

TBH, I’d rather have more self sufficient traits and skills than more that support allies.

One problem I have with healing power is that it goes with absolutely nothing, its a support stat in a offensive game that is suppose to rid its self of healer archetypes.

One of the most interesting things about the original gw was how CC was handled. To my knowledge there was only one way you could lose control of your character and that was with knockdown.

Which was easily countered if you brought the appropriate skills. Gw2 takes everything most people hate about wow and amplifies it. There are quite a bit of ways to lose control of your character and to top it off they can be chained. At least Blizzard had the decency to incorporate CC immunity in pvp.

Anet on the other hand just gives stunbreaker and stability which can be stripped!

In comparison to the original there was only knockdown. In gw2 we have:

Knockdown, Fear, Stun, Daze (to a degree), immobilize and launch. When you look at it, four of the ccs do the exact same thing but just “appear” differently.

Knockdown: Lose control of your character
Fear: Lose control of your character
Stun: Lose control of your character
Launch: Lose control of your character

I would count daze, but its only a interrupt. But I would like to add its a interesting one, since unlike the original gw1 interrupt now stops you from moving and using skills for a very brief time. In gw1, that specific skill that was interrupted was locked out. And daze only affected casting from what I remember.

If anet wanted to copy wow pvp at least they could of added some sort of balance to CC. Diminishing returns on CC would make way more sense. This would promote actual timing instead of spamming.

But perhaps Anet’s intention was to make the most spamming game possible? I don’t have the answer to that.

Tarsius.3170:

Christos de Soufre.3802:

Tarsius.3170:

I don’t think we’ll see blanket buffs because it would make certain builds much too strong

I don’t know what you’re talking about.

…

and I had even resisted the temptation to add “I’m looking at you Christos” – now I wish I had ;-)

@OP I think the max HP a guardian can achieve is just over 2300, that’s 2.5k of healing for allies just for rolling in the dirt every second or two in a zerg.

Yeah but what do their other stats look like?

Fjandi.2516:

Oh i got it, so basically it’s all in our mind, all this aoe spam, this cc spam, all these confusing effects. It’s just our perception. I really see it now…I finally realize everything. I finally understand.

Its because you aren’t good at the game yet, so you really can’t understand the depth gw2 offers.

/sarcasm

prozon.3561:

[X] Vote for nerf the hole Condi dmg by 30%, than it is where it should be. If you still want more dps, you have to spec fully into +cond dmg and lack of surviva.

Rebuild amullets, there is not one out which gives you toughness, power, precision and %krit dmg. Otherwise there shouldnt be one which gives you toughness precision and cond dmg. (cause cond dmg = power + krit ed)

They could redo how condition damage scales, currently it starts to become less and less potent the more condition damage you get. Making it so having a high amount of condition damage a waste.

When power, crit chance and damage are low, one can feel the results. With condition damage not so. And I’m totally against a rock paper scissors system of balance, it will only make things far worse. Since it basically sets a person up for a win or lose by their archetype.

What they need to do is introduce more counter skills, to put into balance those that do not have a hard counter. GW1 did this and this is the reason why there wasn’t extremes, because it was always possible to design a way to counter a build that someone is using to dominate.

In gw2 we do not have this and are left waiting for the devs to fix stuff.

Fenrir.5493:

kitten s.7421:

The only way condis are “bursting people” is because of bleed and burning. Nerf burnings overall damage and how condi power effects it. Nerf bleeding’s overall damage, how condi power effects it and nerf how it stacks in intensity. 6 stacks of bleeding on a target shouldnt be doing the insane amount of damage it is doing now. These 2 condis are the reason condi classes are destroying. Nerf them and balanced game.

Today i was beign nuked by a necro pretty bad, i think i have never seen that amount of damage not even on a backstab, its hard to believe that conditions are “bursting” instead of doing damge in time…and bursting better than a burst build and in less time.

I think its a combination of fear, bleeds, poison, burning and direct damage all at once. Yes, its quite ridiculous.

Derps.7421:

The only way condis are “bursting people” is because of bleed and burning. Nerf burnings overall damage and how condi power effects it. Nerf bleeding’s overall damage, how condi power effects it and nerf how it stacks in intensity. 6 stacks of bleeding on a target shouldnt be doing the insane amount of damage it is doing now. These 2 condis are the reason condi classes are destroying. Nerf them and balanced game.

Burning itself isn’t the issue. If it was, then a guardian traited for burning would be awesome in pvp. Unfortunately they aren’t. I think its better to say, conditions become op when a class has access to all of them.

The Boz.2038:

Funny how you are content with saying “poison counters healing” and “toughness counters damage”, but feel the need to qualify “condition removal counters conditions” with a special and unique downside.

lol well its true.

Rock, paper, scissors never works in any pvp game.

What Red is saying is certainly true. When you look at the core of gw2, there is no counter anything really. Its impossible for me to make a character that is anti condition damage, that shuts condition characters down. This doesn’t exist!

When balance issues come up, people tend to look at the active effect, that is to say what the balance issue is. Most of the time they don’t look at what causes it. In regards to gw2, imbalances exist because its opposite polarity is either missing or not on par with it.

Examples:

Poison counters Healing
Toughness counters damage
Weakness counters damage

Then we start to see a problem

Nothing counters evade skills
Condition removal counters conditions, but can’t keep up with the pace its reapplied. Also, condition removals tend to have long cds, if the cd is short then they generally remove 1-3 conditions. Problem is, in the current state of the game you are loaded with max conditions from more than one source.

The change to berserker stance for warrior is a step in the right direction. But all defensive oriented classes need this.

jmatb.6307:

the problem is that condi builds get defense and offense at the same time, when a guard sacrifices all his damage to run bunker and burst classes sacrifice defense.

That’s just stupid

Guard could go condition with defense and offense, but the problem is, they only have access to one condition! lol

lmao, its a good video. His points are very accurate.

Master of Timespace.2548:

Cast bars would be a good start. Some currently instant damage skills could be made “semi instant”: give them a short channel timer but allow the user to perform other actions normally while channeling. This would warn the opponent of an incoming attack while keeping the flexibility that instant attacks offer.
Defensive instant skills can remain as they are now.

No use in cast bars, since unlike gw1 there really is no way to make a interrupt build. There is only DODGE and if your class is lucky the occasional knockback or stun.

zackgtie.7421:

Aza.2105:

And ranger wins! Because of pet heal. I’ve been wondering, why is rangers lick wounds better than guardian’s symbol of judgement? LOL!

you meant to say when skill 3 of rangers actually work? 1st the pet has low health and dies. 2nd Who knows where the pet is at and take forever to come and resurrect you. Now assuming a Ranger actually was able to down a guardian… the ranger totally deserves to win! Period.

If the pet dies they’ll just switch to another, which so happens to spawn right on top of them.

One time I actually managed to kill the pet while downed. I was like YES! Then he swapped to a pet with full health and started to do lick wounds, I was like NO!!

ArcTheFallen.7682:

Brigg.6189:

Couldn’t the guardian use #2 to interrupt the pet heal?

It’ll just walk right back and heal after being knocked away.

Yup that is what happens. One would think that ranger would be punished for having the pet knocked away from lick wounds. But it just walks right back its owner and continues to rez lmao.

5 months after the OP post the game remains the same as the OP described. 5 Months later after my post, the game will be the exact same.

ArcTheFallen.7682:

Direct because conditions is for nubs. Honestly though as someone mentioned in another thread, conditions should be an added effect not a real source of damage.

They were a real source of damage in gw1, issue with that is gw1 was actually a more balanced game than gw2. There were plenty of anti condition skills and counters in the game. Where as in gw2 there is only condition removal and convert.

The balance issues are a result of dumbing down the original system.

Atherakhia.4086:

Ranger #2 isn’t a knockback.
Ranger #3 can be interrupted by more than a knockback.

Why are we talking about this instead of why downed state even exists in the first place…

It exists because many gw1 players were to kitten have a rez signet in their build.

And ranger wins! Because of pet heal. I’ve been wondering, why is rangers lick wounds better than guardian’s symbol of judgement? LOL!

Highest dps weapon guardian probably has is scepter….but its scepter. Don’t think many people want to use it and for a darn good reason.

Quickfoot Katana.8642:

No need to preach me, I came from GW1 and I know what complexity is, they had it right for GW1 and they watered down everything in favor of a casual and laidback aproach.

Unless their mentality changes I dont know what to expect, so far, combat is still entertaining me but lacks some necessary depth.

Expect more of the same, it can only go so far as its foundation allows. From the beginning of the game its been about spam, aoe spam and dodge being the hard counter to every attack in the game.

Quickfoot Katana.8642:

A thief spamming heartseeker is not effective. Your punishment is lack of effectiveness. Granted is not really a punishment but a lack of being rewarded.

The only problem with PvP is how things are being managed. I am skeptic that their management is at fault here, but the lack of resources the pvp has access to when compared to the the rest of the game.

That is a non existent punishment. A real punishment would be because your movements predictable, you get hit with a distracting shot. Locking out all of your dagger skills. Then one would think twice before spamming.

Because of balance. GW2 is built upon spamming with no punishment of doing so. To have a balanced game there must be some sort of consequence to your action, in gw2 only positive consequences exist.

For example a thief spamming heart seeker, there is no consequence for the player missing, they just do it again and again. In a game were some sort of balance exists spamming heart seeker might leave you vulnerable to counter attacks. Making you think before you actually use the skill.

Don’t expect any significant changes, because while things may change on the surface the reality is the foundation will still be the same. So the changes will only be shifting from one extreme to another. Necromancer OP for several months then several months later they are bottom tier.

Sadly, the only skill that requires thought is finishing a downed enemy. Because you have to consider if you can finish them before they interrupt you, before teammates interrupt you, before they are revived and if you have enough HP to complete the finishing animation. There is a lot to consider, you are making yourself completely vulnerable. Its too bad this type of thinking doesn’t extend itself to the rest of the game.

Anet should just stay true to gw2 spirit, lower the finishing animation to .25 secs, so if you get interrupted you can just do it again and again, with little to no consequence.

ColinJohanson.2394:

The setting adjustments you can make currently will expand beyond just WvW, and simply be a game wide setting you apply for culling rules. For most folks, this means you can adjust the settings to actually improve your performance over current performance if you wish, since fallback models and name-tags are cheaper than full model renders.

If you do want to turn everything up to insane, you also now have that option to see an extremely large number of people in all their graphics glory. The choice is entirely yours!

Colin,

This sounds great. Thank you!

But will we see cpu performance improvements going into 2014?

Blasino.3128:

Aza.2105:

I’m not the one that said its low, my opinion is thakittens mediocre.

But you are saying he is right?

We can go on like this forever. The point is you took one portion of my reply which was part of an entire point that AtlasUnbound has done a poor job of conveying his thoughts and started to chest thump.

Depends, you don’t seem to be satisfied with the answers I’ve given you. Would it satisfy you if I confirmed what you think I’m saying to you?

Amins.3710:

Aza.2105:

Amins.3710:

Blasino.3128:

Aza.2105:

Stuff

Then why are you even replying to my point to AtlasUbound if you aren’t even arguing “low damage output?”

And, I never said we do comparable damage to a warrior or was I even arguing that point.

Whirling Wraith is on the Same Exact Cooldown w/ 20% less raw damage, however we’re not rooted in place… so take that as you will.

No 100b is a 8sec cd, 6 1/2 (?) traited. Whirling Wraith is a 10sec cd 8sec traited. Its true that WW is mobile but the damage doesn’t really have the consistency as 100b due to the projectiles.

In regards to your reply to me, if I had to suggest some positive changes to guardian that doesn’t drastically alter play mechanics. It would be:

Ah, must have misread it.

However, the consistency is exactly the same. You could even go so far as to say WW is 10x’s better because it’s not reliant upon your target being stunned/rooted for the full duration.

Projectiles are just an issue w/ learning curve. Everyone know’s to stand on top of your target.

But the projectile damage is reduced the more targets there are right? I’m assuming the projectile vanishes when it hits something.

Blasino.3128:

Aza.2105:

Stuff

Then why are you even replying to my point to AtlasUbound if you aren’t even arguing “low damage output?”

And, I never said we do comparable damage to a warrior or was I even arguing that point.

Because you called out the one poster, saying what he wrote was crap. But realistically he isn’t wrong. But the problem is not a linear issue as I noted.

Amins.3710:

Blasino.3128:

Aza.2105:

Stuff

Then why are you even replying to my point to AtlasUbound if you aren’t even arguing “low damage output?”

And, I never said we do comparable damage to a warrior or was I even arguing that point.

Whirling Wraith is on the Same Exact Cooldown w/ 20% less raw damage, however we’re not rooted in place… so take that as you will.

No 100b is a 8sec cd, 6 1/2 (?) traited. Whirling Wraith is a 10sec cd 8sec traited. Its true that WW is mobile but the damage doesn’t really have the consistency as 100b due to the projectiles.

In regards to your reply to me, if I had to suggest some positive changes to guardian that doesn’t drastically alter play mechanics. It would be:

Elusive power: Gain 10% damage when endurance is full. Now it synergizes with vigorous precision.

Unscathed Contender: Gain 10% damage for each active virtue. (Max 30% damage)

Pure of Heart: Changed to proc on block instead of the removal of aegis, but lowered the maximum base healing.

Spirit weapons: Remain summoned until destroyed, cooldowns begin after you summon them.

Zealous Blade: Increased damage to 10% (up from 5%).

Glacial Heart: Now increases hammer damage by 5%

Zealot’s Defense: The block mechanic is now registers as a normal block.

Flashing Blade: Increased range to 900.

Banish: Damage increased

Zealot’s Embrace: Damage increased

Smite Condition: Is now a blast finisher.

Power of the Virtuous: Damage per boon increased to 2% up from 1%

Blasino.3128:

Aza.2105:

Blasino.3128:

Third, Guardian has a low damage output? I really think you need to read the wiki before spewing crap like this. Most professions would kill to have the skill coefficients Anet has given us. Just because we can’t Hundred-blades doesn’t mean we can drop a good 18k of damage in 2 seconds on a person (because we kittening can).

Coefficients are only part of the big picture. When you start to include damage modifiers and cooldowns then a very different picture begins to emerge.

Please by all means show the low damage output of a guardian.

No, you show me how its comparable to warriors. I’m not the one that said its low, my opinion is thakittens mediocre. And I’m not doing a number by number comparison, that is a very linear approach and doesn’t consider other variables such as cds, damage modifiers, cooldown reduction traits.

You are saying that guardian can deliver a equivalent of a 100b 18k hit, guess what? I believe you. But I’m asking you if when 100b is off cd six seconds later, can guardian once again deliver a 18k attack? My point is, guardian would be outpaced by every other class in game due to a few reasons:

Longer weapon skill cooldowns
Situational access to quickness
Damage modifiers placed in obscure places
Damage modifiers with strange requirements (unscathed defender) (elusive power is contrasting to vigor on crit)
Inability to keep enemies in radius to deliver full damage
Lack of hp and defense to bridge the interval between complete skill rotation, which results in the probability of dying before the next rotation. (in pvp) (when you trait to do damage)

All of these things add up to bring down the overall dps of the class. Other classes may not have the damage coefficients. But guardian does not have their consistency nor the ability to be offensive while retaining defensive techniques.

Blasino.3128:

Third, Guardian has a low damage output? I really think you need to read the wiki before spewing crap like this. Most professions would kill to have the skill coefficients Anet has given us. Just because we can’t Hundred-blades doesn’t mean we can drop a good 18k of damage in 2 seconds on a person (because we kittening can).

Coefficients are only part of the big picture. When you start to include damage modifiers and cooldowns then a very different picture begins to emerge.

Arken.3725:

I’ve advocated for the change of symbols to temporary Auras for a little while. Speaking about the current meta(AoE-Condition), the benefit gained from symbols compared to the damage thrown by AoE’s is negligible. Also, I don’t believe many would stand in these symbols to gain the minimal benefit when the potential to get condi bursted is a lot more concerning.

Obviously you’d have to adjust the symbols(auras) accordingly, but I do believe it would promote more mobile play in a very face-paced and constantly moving game.

Symbols similar to: http://wiki.guildwars.com/wiki/Balthazar%27s_Aura

I’d be all for that, guardian would still be area denial class. Except a mobile one. Symbols in their current form just aren’t very good. Anet promotes guardians to post up in one spot, in a game that is all about mobility and dodging.

How ironic.

Did it with full spirit weapons build: 30/30/0/0/10. Get all of the spirit weapon traits.

Use hounds of balthazar for a elite. When the fight starts summon the spirits and hounds. Put them on chomper, make sure to get the meat before he does.

Use the spirit hammer for knockbacks. Bring a hammer for skill 5 and banish.

I was actually hoping the effect LOD would fix this problem. Even with it enabled, things still look the same. Most of the time I’m staring at a flashing white mob with a feint silhouette. It makes it impossible to see what the mob is doing because of this.

FoopOplo.7914:

There is a reason guardians don’t have much swiftness… they aren’t supposed too. They’re the strong, but slow class. Stop asking for swiftness. What’s next? Stealth too?

Just how warriors were suppose to rely on other classes for condition removal. But now can remove conditions extremely well. And just how necromancer got burning, which is total out of character for the class.

Right?

Obtena.7952:

Aza.2105:

So you are confirming that guardian’s class skills are generic.

I’m not sure how you got that from my post … didn’t I say that the concept of Virtues were unique?

Aza.2105:

My idea for virtues is that the should become stances. When using VoJ guard switches to a offensive stance, increasing damage, crit chance and dmg, cond dmg and every five attacks burns the target.

VoR should be a supportive stance, that increases hp regen, healing power, toughness and has reduced condition duration.

VoC should be a defensive stance, that increases dmg resistance, max hp, toughness, boon durations and gives aegis every 30secs.

Something like this would be more unique than what we have now.

I don’t know … unique is unique. Is there grades for uniqueness? As for stances, the idea is reasonable. Would you be able to swap them out on the fly?

Yea you would be able to swap them out like ele attunements, they are put on cds once you swap. So you can’t juggle between them.

And to answer your question, I said what I did because you confirmed virtues are not unique by expressing how other classes indeed have access to what virtues do. Its just that guardian applies them in a unique manner. That is not enough to put it on the level of any of the other classes in game.

Obtena.7952:

The boons you get from the skills aren’t unique but the way we access them is. Yes, other professions have regen, burning etc … but they have to use specific weapons, traits, skills to get access. Ours are built into our profession … that’s unique because they are accessible always, regardless of your build.

What I think would be super neato to allow more versatility playing to our “We have Virtues” strength would be to allow the player to choose from a list of boons/conditions to associate with the Virtues instead of the three we have fixed. To balance this out better, each boon would have it’s different set of parameters for passive/active and you would be restricted in stacking … for example, you couldn’t stack a condition damage in each virtue.

I’m a little disappointed that this thread hasn’t generated a whole bunch of ideas about improving the class. Instead, it’s generated alot of controversial discussion about how deficient the class is, when it isn’t.

So you are confirming that guardian’s class skills are generic.

My idea for virtues is that the should become stances. When using VoJ guard switches to a offensive stance, increasing damage, crit chance and dmg, cond dmg and every five attacks burns the target.

VoR should be a supportive stance, that increases hp regen, healing power, toughness and has reduced condition duration.

VoC should be a defensive stance, that increases dmg resistance, max hp, toughness, boon durations and gives aegis every 30secs.

Something like this would be more unique than what we have now.