Guild Wars 2

Lonewolf Kai.3682:

Cry me a river guys…. Seriously. This patch is awesome for users of the mentioned skills. Just because it doesn’t affect you, it makes the patch less? No.

I agree.

All the changes are great. The elite buffs are going to be interesting. But hey, people tend to complain even when something is good.

Changes sound pretty solid.

Evocatus Rex.6857:

So I got a new gpu a while ago – AMD r9 270x
and it runs great on everything but gw2. The graphics are good, and fps is fine but I get this ridiculous bug all the time;

Sometimes it seems to come out of people, for example in the third screenshot the targeted guy had the grey blob thing coming out of his head and moving around with him.

Before you ask, yes I have the latest drivers.

Any ideas? It makes rated pvp pretty much unplayable

Many amd r9 series and 7xxx series have this problem. Its not defective memory to my knowledge since gw2 is the only game this happens with. It could be the drivers, but AMD has never responded about the issue.

Maybe you are misinterpreting the way it works from the tooltip? I suppose it is a bit poorly worded.

When it states number of max targets, its referring to the number of allies around who can be granted might from the trait. It also has a 1 second internal cooldown.

Hope this clears things up a bit.

Edit: I kitten ed on the cooldown, corrected!

Sagat.3285:

Aza.2105:

When there is a nerf thread it always amounts to someone trying to discredit the person/s perspective on the other side of the fence. Its probably best not to do that because each person has some truth to what they are saying, even though it may not be the whole truth.

We should try to keep things simple, maybe by discussing the matter in bullet points. In this case the bullet points could be the strengths and weaknesses of the d/d celestial ele.

I only can say that when you have a build that has high sustain, survivability and damage then this is never a good thing. Since the point of diversity is to sacrifice one area of strength for another. If d/d celestial ele has all three then there is a problem, though the problem may not necessarily be in the area that some people think it is.

It’s because a naked ele has balanced level of all three of those so celestial is more effective on them. Full water magic and arcana(healing+vitality+boon duration) deserves high sustain so that is innocent. First weakness condition,right after they get off water or if they use it carelessly,on condition thief,necro and engi I’m fine against them adding that they are melee also. Second weakness tanks if retaliation is present even more,long fight but if ele stay he will eventually lose. Post patch celestial war will be balanced with torment and adrenaline changes now they will be naturally weak against damage conditions,celestial engi is still weak to condition and cc.

A good celestial(because guard and thief can’t use it) counters an offensive power set up but not longbow ranger that much(they can make you chase them) or just have someone on squad to remove boons if you are in one if not the game is not made for 1v1 you can find your hardest counter out there.

Its true that this isn’t a 1v1 game, but you have to look at it in the big picture. The weaknesses you named are niche, what I mean by this is either a class doesn’t access to it at all or they have very limited access.

• Only a few classes have a viable condition build
• Retaliation has a limited uptime
• Only a few classes have viable boon strip/removals

Because of this it magnifies the problem that people perceive eles have. Yes I agree that those all are weaknesses. But I feel there is much more to it. The biggest issue imo is the lack of intervals of vulnerability with the build. To my knowledge there is little risk of screwing up and being punished.

My perspective about intervals of vulnerability is the time between uptime and cooldowns. Its that time when counter play is possible and its because of that time that it makes the player conscious about what skills they should or should not do. And its also the time when enemies can take advantage of the situation.

You gave a small example of hitting the ele with conditions as soon as they come out of water attunement. This is a valid, but think about how short the rotation is between x attunment and back to water and the water skills with the d/d set. Its very short compared to lets say retaliation up time or the consistency of boon strip and such.

Even if the opposing player makes the right moves like doing boon removal, pounding the ele with conditions or using retaliation. The recovery rate of ele is so fast that they will eventually out live them anyway.

You can use the argument of the game not being 1v1, but its a problem when it takes more than one class to tackle a build that isn’t even a bunker build and does a high amount of damage.

Evan Lesh.3295:

Thanks for making this thread. It would be interesting to know all the desired requirements of a system like this as it pertains to Gw2 PvP. Even in Dota2 I only end up using a couple things on the wheel: Missing, and sometimes backup. I usually just spam map pings for everything else.

Hey Evan,

This is kind of related to communication but, I think it would be really helpful if the call target vocal was changed to the distinct ping sound that was in the original guild wars. Most of the time, the vocal “assist me” isn’t heard. And if it is heard the audio is very low.

Because of this most of the time I have to look to see if someone was asking to focus a target in party chat rather than actually hearing it.

When there is a nerf thread it always amounts to someone trying to discredit the person/s perspective on the other side of the fence. Its probably best not to do that because each person has some truth to what they are saying, even though it may not be the whole truth.

We should try to keep things simple, maybe by discussing the matter in bullet points. In this case the bullet points could be the strengths and weaknesses of the d/d celestial ele.

I only can say that when you have a build that has high sustain, survivability and damage then this is never a good thing. Since the point of diversity is to sacrifice one area of strength for another. If d/d celestial ele has all three then there is a problem, though the problem may not necessarily be in the area that some people think it is.

One positive thing I seen Anet do is trying to build up depth win their game world. In the traditional mmorpg, zones are like stepping stones. Like a school system. Each one leading to a higher tier, when the character reaches end game they rarely go back to visit “beginner zones”.

I feel Anet did a good job giving each zones a feel a of importance and a reason to come back and visit them.

Other than that, I believe Anet is failing on many accounts:

• Lack of skill/build diversity
• No new meaningful content
• Class balance issues
• two times per year balance pass
• Rewards offered in many game modes don’t feel too rewarding

Those are just somethings I can name off the top of my head.

GOSU.9574:

Rym.1469:

GOSU.9574:

Rym.1469:

You have monks. They’re called Guardians and still are almost necessary for any serious PvP match. Now they’re more tough, but with less healing, that’s it.

They’re as needed as in GW1.

Guardians are nothing like Monks. Nothing like them at all. It’s like saying a coconut is just like a kiwi.

It comes mostly to the role in group.

Imagine yourself on two lonely islands, starving.

On the first island, there’s a coconut. On the second, there’s a kiwi.

Does it matter that they taste differently? They’re both considered as food, something that you, as a person dying from starvation, need if you want to survive on that island.

Their role is necessary.

So is Guardian’s.

You try to hard to shoehorn the analogy to fit your desired result.

How many single target heals does a guardian have? /close debate

There are no target ally skills in this game….so why even bring that up? That doesn’t mean that guardian isn’t like monk though.

http://www.eurogamer.net/articles/2011-01-27-guild-wars-2-guardian-replaces-monk

The class has similarities to monk, but its more of a monk/paragon hybrid. Guardian does have a similar role as monks did.

Ragnar the Rock.3174:

Chicago Jack.5647:

Shield is actually a good offhand for what its intended use is. It doesn’t need changed. Offhand torch is pretty terrible, but that’s just because guardian condi damage is limited – as it should be. I don’t know what could be done with offhand torch. Ideally I’d like to see the “offensive” weapons of guardians to have the most reliable ways to peel for other players – bar none; not a single class should be able to peel for a person better than a guardian. A reliable way to say to the opposing player, “Hey I’m here, and you’re gonna have to deal with me first.” Hammer is pretty close, but needs more reliable ways to apply its skills. Scepter is pretty dumb and bad. The one saving grace it has is its reliable immobilize to setup some damage – damage setup is where this weapon should be good at. Speed buffs are probably not going to happen to guardian though.

Shield is decent but could use some quality fixes.
For instance #4 is alright if your playing scepter but because its a wave its bad for melee. Make it an AOE centered on the guardian and it would be great.

1. is also kind of meh because it doesn’t stop ground targeted AOE and it roots you in place.
   Make it something you drop and don’t have to worry about maintaining and it becomes very good.

As for condition damage. They have shown that they want condition damage to be better. The addition of amplified wrath show this. The problem is that burning by itself can’t compete with other classes that can apply 3-5 conditions at once.
If they were to allow guardian to apply a second damaging condition like confusion in low quantities consistently then condition play could be truly viable for guardian.

Agree speed buffs likely should not happen, however some way to apply cripple would be very nice as it would allow guardians to stay on target better.

Actually, the shield is good for melee. Here is my theory that supports it, that the wave to shield 4 was designed for tanking encounters. In traditional mmorpgs, the tank pulled the boss and faced it away from the party. So when you look at it that way, the cone for shield #4 makes sense. Because if you are facing the boss and your party is at the bosses rear the cone would hit them.

But the other perspective to this is that the agro management in this game is passive and unreliable and there is no guarantee that the boss will face and focus on you while the party dps.

My personal opinion is that the majority of gw2 players look at things in a vertical line, meaning that the higher the better, in this case damage. I don’t think the conjured weapons were ever suppose to increase eles dps by extraordinary amounts but rather increase their versatility.

Think about it, the design philosophy of the class is being versatile. There is no coincidence that the conjured weapon give ele access to weapons they innately don’t have. So the weapons themselves are suppose to provide a a horizontal scaling (options, choices, versatility) instead of a vertical scaling (more damage).

Ragnar the Rock.3174:

Little idea I had.

What if they reworked Glacial Heart.

Make it something like

“Glacial Heart” Whenever you blind a target you also apply chill to nearby enemies.
2 second duration, 180 radius around blinded enemy & 10 second cool down.

This would effectively give the guardian more uptime in melee and limit how much they could be kited offsetting the fact that guardian burst potential is much much lower then other melee specs.

I don’t think they will change glacial heart again. I personally feel that giving glacial heart a damage modifier for hammers would make it more useful. Maybe a 10% dmg increase + the rng proc would be ok.

The armor skin is amazing, hands down the best heavy armor inspired set they made.

Ceremonial armor looks slick, its one of the best heavy armor skins Anet has ever created. I already brought mine, its well worth the purchase imo.

Charak.9761:

tomes need perma stability to make them at all viable

I used to run tomes with lyssa rune (stability on elite and full condi cleanse), but the nerfed to the rune made the tomes worthless

At launch tomes did have stability, then they removed it and replaced it with retaliation for tome of wrath and protection boon for tome of courage. Overall tomes have always felt clunky, as all transformations do in this game.

With that said, buffing spirit weapons is good news despite some people being on the fence about it.

One of the biggest problems in this game is diversity, a lot of it has to do with the community’s overall perspective but the other portion is that some skills are down right bad. With guardian we have two three utility categories that are frequently used:

1. Shouts
2. Meditations
3. Consecrations

All three of those are in a pretty good spot, but signets and spirit weapons go relatively unused. So 2/5 utility categories go unused. So 9 skills are unused, that’s quite significant. Also, the only reason why zeal tree feels underwhelming is because spirit weapons are. With spirit weapons viable the zeal tree by proxy becomes viable as well.

Hopefully they make the right moves with the changes. I imagine somehow spirit weapons will also be able to provide boons, but we’ll see.

Venomge.7142:

What I wanted to add is, spending half the initiative pool on a skill that’s effectiveness has been cut in half doesn’t sound too good now. Lower the ini cost for it as well.

I feel the point of the nerf is to introduce more risk vs reward into the skill. If they changed it based upon your suggestion then it would end up the same as it was before. A little to no risk with a great reward. Currently Black Powder can be perpetually used, 4 pulses, 4 seconds. After the field is gone, a thief should have initiative to do it again.

Yes in pve mobs are stupid, in pvp players may stand in it. But this isn’t the point of the nerf, the point is the length of the interval of vulnerability when using BP. At this time its very small. When I say a interval of vulnerability, I’m referring to the up and down time of the effects associated with the skill in relation to when the class (or in this case thief is vulnerable to attack).

Right now the interval is quite small, with the only way to access the interval is by stepping out of the aoe. Intervals of vulnerability are needed, its what makes the user consider if its a good idea to use xxx skill or not since the objective is to not die and to take as little damage as possible.

The only people this change affects are those who spam.

Lonewolf Kai.3682:

Just saw this on the warrior forum and thought I’d share this with those who weren’t available for Ready Up

:https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/professions/warrior/Ready-Up-Warrior-Balance-Changes-Discussion/first#post4275698

What I’d like the Guardians to know in particular was this:

• Signet of Might – You now have 6 seconds to deliver as many unblockable attacks as you can instead of only 5 attacks.

Thoughts on this from a Guardian perspective?

Counter play is good for the game. The way I see it is like this, the change doesn’t make it that much different than it is now. Its not like they will be able to hit a dozen times in a 6 seconds. Instead of having 5 attacks that bypass block, it may end up being 7 or so. But no big deal imo.

Lopez.7369:

Evan Lesh.3295:

Nope, not on autopilot. Nope, not designed by one designer. I Promise features are coming eventually. I want them finished and as badly as you do!

Actions speak louder than words, and the actionable evidence is pretty obvious.

I agree with what you are saying here.

Personally I feel that pvp is more like a side project for the developers. Ironically, they tend to balance everything around pvp yet its so niche and clearly not the primary focus.

To be realistic, I say expect changes for pvp twice per year and changes for pve twice per month.

Ragnar the Rock.3174:

Frankly given the long cool down and problems with sanctuary I personally hope they move it back to being an elite, make it bigger and make it so ground targeted AOE cannot be placed inside like it was during closed beta.

Interesting, I didn’t know it use to be a elite. That would make way more sense if it was.

Ragnar the Rock.3174:

Aza.2105:

Ragnar the Rock.3174:

1: Shattered AEGIS, Damage is pathetic (Make it apply confusion stacks when an AEGIS you apply is broken. would work good for condi guardians in Spvp then.)

Shattered Aegis is fine, you might be looking at it from a solo perspective. Which ends up looking weak (up to a 2.2k+ hit if you are zerker). The real beauty in shattered aegis is when you combine it with communal defenses. What this means is for each person you grant aegis, if its broken you will do up to 2.2k damage per person. So imagine being in a zerg of lets say 40 people. You proc communal defenses and grant them all aegis, they are all hit. So this becomes 2.2k x 40, shattered aegis now does 88k damage.

True it does get better while in a group. Though any ability that applies AEGIS does still have a 5 target limit.
It would be nice if they would also update the tooltip to make it better show just how much damage it can do.

Communal Defenses has no target limit:

This trait does not have a target limit and will grant aegis to all allies within range.

http://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Communal_Defenses

So theoretically shattered aegis with communal defenses could scale infinitely. But realistically, I’d say you are looking at up to 70 or shattered aegis procs. I don’t think I’ve seen a 100+ size zerg but I could be wrong since I’m not sure how many people a map can hold on average.

Ragnar the Rock.3174:

1: Shattered AEGIS, Damage is pathetic (Make it apply confusion stacks when an AEGIS you apply is broken. would work good for condi guardians in Spvp then.)

Shattered Aegis is fine, you might be looking at it from a solo perspective. Which ends up looking weak (up to a 2.2k+ hit if you are zerker). The real beauty in shattered aegis is when you combine it with communal defenses. What this means is for each person you grant aegis, if its broken you will do up to 2.2k damage per person. So imagine being in a zerg of lets say 40 people. You proc communal defenses and grant them all aegis, they are all hit. So this becomes 2.2k x 40, shattered aegis now does 88k damage.

Moving on. If I had the ability to communicate with devs to ask them to change some things, here is what it would be:

Signets & related traits

• All signets should have a instant cast time

• Perfect Inscriptions should grant regeneration in addition to the 20% passive bonus

• Signet of Mercy needs a complete change, its too niche Maybe the active can increase outgoing heals for a short duration.

Spirit Weapons

• AI needs to actually work, made to be more reliable

• Bow of Truth needs a overhaul, maybe change the condi removal and regen to a passive buff while the weapon is active. The active skill needs to scale with healing power.

• Eternal Spirit needs to be made baseline, replace it with a trait that increases the health of spirit weapons.

• Improved Spirit Weapon Duration (Valor V) should be combined with Spirit Weapon Mastery (Zeal VI). The way spirit weapon traits are organize makes the player need to dip into 3 trait lines, thus limiting possible builds

Mace

• Auto attack chain: Needs to be much faster

• Symbol of Faith: Casting time should be reduced.

• Protector’s Strike’s block should take priority over the aegis boon

Shield

• Shield of Judgment: Weakens enemies in addition to doing damage and granting protection to allies

• Shield of Absorption: Scales better with healing power, the dome duration increased from 4 to 8 secs. In addition after the dome is cast, the user can now be mobile. But the dome stays in the place where it was cast.

Rangersix.1754:

- Multiple waterfields can be dropped.
- Many classes possess over blast finishers with short cooldowns, Guardian included.
- Water fields have an extremely large base heal, completely eclipsing many other heals.
- Other heals have (large) cooldowns too, some (like regeneration) are tied to intervals while waterfields are not.

A water fields base healing is 1320, if one had 1600 healing power then the healing of the field scales up to 1640. That’s not extremely large, its average and it scales average. The thing is when you and others compare water fields to lets say a guardian heal. You are comparing dozens of people blasting vs one healing guardian. Then of course water fields would out heal it.

If you compare them 1:1, that is to say one person blasting vs one healing guardian then no a water field doesn’t even come close to a healing guardian. But if you want to compare it 12:1 or even 50:1 then certainly a whole zerg of players blasting would be better. So in that respect your comparison would contain many half truths and is a bit deceptive.

A skill like healing breeze out heals a water field blast, 50 guardians using healing breeze would out heal 50 people using a blast finisher in a water field. But 50 guardians running healing breeze would be impractical. So I think it would be better for you to say not that water fields out heal guardian heals but they are more practical to utilize than to have a zerg of guardians specialized to run healing breeze and other heals.

Fashion Mage.3712:

Rangersix.1754:

Fashion Mage.3712:

^Agreed.

As for water elementalists vs healer guardians, from the calculations I did awhile back, healer guardians had better allied healing, especially with Tome of Courage. Like I said though, I did those calculations awhile back, so I could be wrong. :>

Just the fact that they drop waterfields, makes them infinity more useful than a ‘healing’ Guardian.

Maybe in a big WvW zerg or with someone who can reliably spam blast finishers (most cannot as far as I’m aware of), otherwise, not in your wildest dreams. Not to mention one would have to use their typically limited blast finishers which could have been used on other fields (or already have been and are thus on cooldown).

Healing Breeze alone outheals like six water blast finishers. Not that a healer guardian would only support and sustain allies by healing, as Aza pointed out.

Well in a zerg water fields work well if you have a large group of people who are all on voip to coordinate blast finishers. But the way people tend to illustrate water fields is:

• They have a infinite duration
• They have non existent cooldowns
• There are infinite blast finishers to go around

None of this is true though. But since no one has measured water field heals in regards to durations (they vary) and individual class/weapon set blast finishers then its very hard to estimate how much or how little healing they do. Furthermore, its (or can be) a cross profession mechanic.

TheFamster.7806:

One/two procs of aegis will not keep teammates alive especially in such spread out battles. You seem to forget that those traits have very small radius and have long cooldown times to even trigger at the right moment.

Communal defenses has a 360 radius with a modest 20sec cd. Everyone is stacked up for teq and wurm. So I don’t see how what you are saying to me is relevant. Its more so relevant to your own personal experience with your teq and wurm runs.

TheFamster.7806:

Thats like saying you can still have mantra and shatter build at the same time as mesmer. In order to be truly optimal and beneficial for whole party guardians have to sacrifice dps or survival. Which means cooldown reduction traits are must have and by investing points in zeal and taking communal defenses you are already compromising yourself as support+possible utilty cooldowns. You are gambling on the aegis proc and effectiveness of it when your party/teammates are actually relying on you for sure results..

There really isn’t anything you are saying that is applicable here. Again what you have said here has to do with your negative perception in regards to the trait. Which is fine, but do not apply it to me.

TheFamster.7806:

This is a terrible attitude for any dps mindset because the point of gw2 is to burst mobs/bosses down. There are calculated builds made by experienced people and that is called the metabuild. I’m not saying that your builds aren’t usable, but they are very risky and unreliable, thus rendering your traits useless. Also people have dodge and healing so one aegis won’t make a difference, especially due to down system.

You see, this will only lead to more negativity in our discussion. I’ve already explained to you my personal experience with both encounters, but here you are trying to indirectly re-write my experience by bringing up all of these possible bad scenarios that will and does happen. In short what does any of this have to do with me? I certainly don’t have the results that you do.

TheFamster.7806:

If everyone takes such build as yours with the same mindset, the dps loss will be huge. What you are doing to your team/party is basically telling them to rely on their own survival because of your own selfishness/theory of utilizing bugged/sub optimal trait.

This is a very large assumption. When someone does this, the conversation shifts from a them talking to another individual to them talking to themselves by imposing their perspective and personal experience upon them. At this point I’d ask you if you are willing to discuss mechanics with me or if you prefer to continue to discuss them internally with yourself?

TheFamster.7806:

I’ve actually considered all types of gameplay and please tell me how useful aegis is when you do teq/wurm.

Communal defense is great for keeping team mates up, especially during 3 headed wurm phase 2. When it does its charge skill, the ally wide aegis definitely improves the amount of people who aren’t downed by the charge skill. With teq, communal defenses works extremely well with shattered aegis.

TheFamster.7806:

During teq it is better to provide stabilty+condition removals over bugged aegis which triggers for almost anything and lasts 25 seconds at most for one block.

You can still have condi removal and stability while having communal defense. What is stopping you from taking stand your ground? Also, after the first battery phase of teq I’d switch to more dps focused traits since he will be burned to the next battery phase.

TheFamster.7806:

Communial defense is useless because as a guardian its better to take Altruistic Healing to survive to provide more boons and remove more conditions than random 360 range aegis on 20 seconds cooldown. And for shattered Aegis, if you take that trait you already lose out on 10% damage modifier+ possible 20% more damage (unscathed contender).

AH is great, but from my experience it did not subtract from my survivability at all. CD is not for the guardian’s survivability but for allies around him. Like I mentioned about wurm, its more valuable there due to the charge during phase 2. The less people you have who are downed when he does that, the faster you can kill it.

I personally do not see how unscathed contender would be useful at teq seeing that you will not have aegis most of the time before the first battery phase. After the first battery, it wouldn’t be a bad idea to switch to it though.

TheFamster.7806:

So my understanding is that you would trade 10% damage modifier trait, put 6 traits in valor to sacrifice personal dps+ utility + aegis recharge time? I’d rather have no aegis to use WoR, Hallowed Ground and Purging Flame and have 10% dps modifier.)

That is a matter of preference and depends what your guild asks of you. I think lately my guild hasn’t asked guardians to use wor but shield of a avenger, sometimes they switch back to wor. But again what is stopping your from taking wor with communal defense?

You lose 10% damage modifier initially, but you gain shattered aegis procs x (60+ during my teq runs). So what sounds more beneficial to you? The 10% damage modifier or 275 dmg x 60 (not taking to consideration might stacks) every 20 secs.

TheFamster.7806:

Oh and also do tell how useful aegis traits are when you do dungeons, tpvp and even wvw. Instead of providing stability, condition removal and boons its more important to have aegis up for about 2 seconds?

I didn’t say aegis traits could be useful in dungeons, tpvp or wvw. What I did say was “Communal defense is very strong in premium encounters such a teq and wurm, so is shattered aegis.”

I still don’t see how you can’t take condi removal, stability and boons with communal defenses. Perhaps its just you who has that issue. Regardless though, at teq its not a condi heavy fight. Thinking off the top of my head, the only conditions I see are poison and fear.

For teq (the first phase) my build is usually 2/0/6/6/0. With Shattered Aegis, Strength in Numbers, Mace of Justice, Communal Defenses, Pure of Heart, Protective Reviver/Writ of the Merciful, Pure of Voice.

Utilities would be, stand your ground, purging flame, wor/soa

During the 2nd battery phase I switch to a more dps oriented build since like I mentioned, my guild just dps through to the next battery phase repeatedly until its dead.

Booms.2594:

shout guards are fine BUFF MEDIS

Both shouts and meds are fine imo. They need to buff signets and spirit weapons. Both of which no one really uses.

Ynna.8769:

Aza.2105:

Most of those traits don’t need a revamp. Its not Anets fault that most of the guardian community is hog tied to certain ideas pertaining to the class and refuse to let them go to explore other things.

A month or so after launch, I made a list of all the traits, talking about their usefulness. And most of them are useless, especially if you factor in their opportunity costs. I recently started playing again and the traits haven’t changed in a significant way, so I’ll continue believing that a good part doesn’t have its place.

During that month after launch, people were really creative with their builds, trying out everything. The community isn’t hog tied to certain ideas. These are the builds that were more or less thrust upon us if we want to play in an effective fashion.

But all in all, I hardly love any trait. They’re mostly just static power-increases and there are hardly any traits that change the way you play. They could be a whole lot more interesting, but that isn’t how the game was designed.

Their usefulness in regards to what? Tpvp, WvW or Pve? Each game mode has builds that aren’t relatively used in another. A example is the valor line, most pve players speak poorly of it. But in tpvp its one of the most used trait lines.

Another example is communal defense, but the OP has this trait listed as one “we” don’t ever use. Communal defense is very strong in premium encounters such a teq and wurm, so is shattered aegis. But since most of the community does not do these bosses then they are on the bad list.

Fashion Mage.3712:

^Agreed.

As for water elementalists vs healer guardians, from the calculations I did awhile back, healer guardians had better allied healing, especially with Tome of Courage. Like I said though, I did those calculations awhile back, so I could be wrong. :>

With their new water trait, some people say that they out heal guardians. Even if they do, I don’t feel it really matters. Since it takes much more than raw healing to sustain a player/s in combat.

Aeolus.3615:

Imo guardian healing isnt that good except for the elite tome and the aoe heal metitation with teleport, and proly healing breeze.
I always saw guardian acting more like a protection monk while healing is suposed to be within water eles and other classes waterfields since even engi can get is own waterfield blast.

Hmmmm I’m not sure I can entirely agree, though I can see how you are comparing guardian to a protection monk. My opinion is most players look at healing the wrong way:

• They try to compare it to traditional healers found in mmos

In traditional mmos, healers generally play a passive/back line role. They do not attack but their entire focus is on healing. Healing is a direct counter to damage. You can be hit for 7k, but the healer can heal for 7k.

In gw2, healing takes a active role. Most heals involve being active in some form, while few allow you to sit back and heal. When I say active I mean that you are actively participating in combat, hitting the mob or player. One example of a active heal is the auto attack for mace or staff ele with water attunement. Many skills and weapons follow this pattern in some way or form.

What is interesting about tome of courage is it allows you to become a traditional healer, albeit for a very short duration. This would be a direct example of a passive role, with tome up you can just sit back and heal. But this type of play style is very rare in the game.

• Most associate healing being bad because it doesn’t produce large numbers similar to what is found in dps

The way I see healing in gw2 is a form of mitigation along side of protection and aegis. I view it as a mechanic used to fill in the intervals when defensive skills, boons, and dodge are on cooldown. I do not see it as a form of mitigation that directly counters damage but a form of mitigation that alleviates it.

One of the strongest perceived heals in game is healing signet, but looking at how much it heals per second (362 per sec), its not very large compared to how much damage a class can dish out in the same time frame. But over time in conjunction with other defensive mechanics mitigates a lot of damage. Guardian has similar and often times greater abilities. Zealous blade with healing power provides significant mitigation. So does selfless daring, VoR with absolute resolution.

Tarsius has a great chart exploring guardian healing. I would recommend everyone take a look at it if they have not already.

More like to test how well your build holds up in 3v5 or 4v5 matches.

spoj.9672:

I want new weapons because they will make classes feel fresh. Thats the only reason. Everything is old as kitten and boring. And no matter what content you are playing you are still using the same weapons and skills you have been since release. Its dull. Weapons are the only thing which makes a class feel different (e.g. gs warrior feels vastly different to hammer).

Well for pve, if the new weapons don’t do a lot of dps then no one won’t use it. So what is the point?

The last LS episode ended with a great cliff hanger, it left one wondering what will happen next? What does the pale tree know?

This episode opened up with the meeting with the pale tree, which felt rather anti climatic. After that it was the return to the zerging events. It just feels intrusive to make the open world events a part of the story. It also makes it feel less immersive since there are 100s of other people doing the same thing as you story wise.

I’d prefer if they kept story telling and zerging events separate. It would be better if they built stories around 5 man content similar to dungeons. This is just my opinion though.

Fashion Mage.3712:

Regeneration that you apply uses your healing power, but it only starts ticking after other people’s regeneration effects wear off that were applied before your regeneration (at least I believe that’s how it goes). Regeneration also scales very well with healing power.

Empower, Regeneration, and Selfless Daring aren’t the only things which scale nicely with healing power either. Off the top of my head, Orb of Light scales extremely well with healing power, Heal Area from ToC scales nicely with healing power, so does Healing Breeze, Virtue of Resolve (active), and Writ of the Merciful.

Zealous Blade and Faithful Strike.

Also, Writ of the Merciful is quite good. If you stack two symbols on top of each other it doubles the output of WoM. With a decent amount of healing power, one can give the group 400+ healing per tick.

Sigil of Water and Rune of Dolyak also scale well with healing power. With 1400+ healing power, sigil of water does 600 hp procs every 5secs or so. Rune of the Dolyak gives around 85+ health per sec, turning it to another mango pie.

Rangersix.1754:

Aza.2105:

Rangersix.1754:

d) The regeneration boon does not scale with your own gear. If you provide a regeneration boon to someone else, the amount of health they regenerate depends on their own amount of +healing, not yours. Example of a Guardian’s ability to apply regeneration is the mace’s symbol (#3) and ‘Hold the Line’.

Are you sure about that? I just now tested this to see if it was true. My regeneration heals me and my target for 311 hp per sec. And the person I tested it on has 0 healing power while I had 1600+.

What might occur is other players regeneration is taking priority over the one you are giving. So it gives the illusion that regeneration is based solely upon the receivers healing power and the not the provider.

Hmm, you’re right I suppose. There are other abilities with similar names that I think I’m mixing it up with, I’ll remove it unless I can prove otherwise.

Try it yourself, don’t take my word for it.

Also, while I agree with a lot of your post. Somethings I don’t. For the most part healing is a good stat, just not in pve. Many of the guardian skills scale well with healing, some like AH do not. Tarsius has a great chart he created that shows how skills scale with healing power. Its pretty nice:

https://docs.google.com/spreadsheet/ccc?key=0As5Q5haUqZ8edHJPaGhRNk9BN2VWaWw4QzByamtXNXc&usp=sharing#gid=0

Rangersix.1754:

d) The regeneration boon does not scale with your own gear. If you provide a regeneration boon to someone else, the amount of health they regenerate depends on their own amount of +healing, not yours. Example of a Guardian’s ability to apply regeneration is the mace’s symbol (#3) and ‘Hold the Line’.

Are you sure about that? I just now tested this to see if it was true. My regeneration heals me and my target for 311 hp per sec. And the person I tested it on has 0 healing power while I had 1600+.

What might occur is other players regeneration is taking priority over the one you are giving. So it gives the illusion that regeneration is based solely upon the receivers healing power and the not the provider.

Greetings,

Every time I try to attempt the story segment at frostgorge I end up d/c. My progress is then rolled back to the last map I was on. This keeps happening again and again, making it impossible to finish the story segment in frostgorge.

TheFamster.7806:

So on my Zeal trait line I don’t/never use

Shattered Aegis (V), Revenge of the Fallen (IV), Binding Jeopardy (I), External Spirit (X), Scepter Power (IX), Wrathful Spirits (XI), Kindled Zeal (XII), Amplified Wrath (XIII)

On my Radiance line I don’t/never use

Healer’s Retribution (I), Shimmering Defense (III), Inner Fire (IV), Searing Flames (V),
Radiant Fire (VII), A fire Inside (VIII), Radiant Retaliation (XIII)

On my Valor Line I don’t/never use

Strength of the Fallen (III), Defender’s Flame (II), Honorable Shield (IX), Communal Defenses (XIII)

On my Honor line I don’t/never use

Wrathful Spirit (I), Protective Reviver (IV), Battle Presence (XII)

On my Virtues Line I don’t/never use

Permeating Wrath (XI), Purity of Body (XIII), Retaliatory Subconscious (IV)

A lot of Zeal/Radiance traits aren’t being used in any aspects (Pve, PvP, WvW) and in order to use few good traits Guardians lose too many useful utilities. I hope on the next upcoming guardian discussion we get some revamped traits and actually useful grandmaster traits (old/new) alike.

Most of those traits don’t need a revamp. Its not Anets fault that most of the guardian community is hog tied to certain ideas pertaining to the class and refuse to let them go to explore other things.

Rangersix.1754:

Zealot’s flame applies a 3 second burn at the start and end of the effect in what is basically melee range (it’s a tiny bit further, less than a step (180 range)). If you basically can’t stay in melee, you can’t affect them with Zealot’s flame either. You can choose to throw it, but it’s only 3 seconds base burn + increases the base CD (meaning less overall burn) if you do that.

What does this have to do with anything? I’m not even sure why you are theory crafting here. I simply pointed out zealots flame since you said guardian has to melee hit to apply burning with the exception of purging flames. And oh, I forgot to add burning on block. No other class has this. With shelter and other blocks you can apply burning at range easily. Without ever having to be near the target.

Rangersix.1754:

Yes, apply very short duration burning (1sec base, 2sec maximum +condition duration) for every three attacks. If you just consider that (and there is little else to take in consideration) you’ll still have downtime even without condition cleanses, most of the time. It also requires you to keep attacking, countering much of your previous argumentation.

Any attempt to stack a what’s even close to long duration burn, will basically mean blowing all your burn abilities and leave you with no means of applying burning for a very long time. If it’s then also cleansed off, it’s even more disastrous than any other condition build.

So what class is applying 10 secs of burning at a time? And what class is applying it much easier? Warrior? Engineer? Elementalist? I don’t feel anything I said is adverse to what I’ve said prior. Its you who aren’t seeing the entirety of what I’m trying to illustrate.

To simply put, those intervals where guardians aren’t in range of their target due to circumstances such as being crippled, immobilized or chilled, or if the target escaped guardian’s melee range. With condi guardian they can still do significant damage to the target during those intervals, where as a physical damage spec guardian generally can not.

Rangersix.1754:

Even is this was true, it would be a very poor argument to not use these “other factors” in your argumentation. Especially considering most thorough documentation, player compared experience and theorycrafting contradicts your claims. If it didn’t, wouldn’t you see condition Guards everywhere? So please, share your argumentation so we can adjust our opinions, results and theories if they lack this vital compontent that we’re all overlooking.

What argument? I’m not sure what you are talking about? Is me giving my perspective a argument?

To answer your question why we don’t see condi guardians every where, its because its a matter of competition. Even though guardian has extrodinary burning application and damage, they need to give up everything else to achieve it. That means no self and ally sustain that the class is known for, no boon sharing etc. I believe Anet referred to it as “holes in roles”. Meaning intentional negative features so that the class isn’t to powerful.

Rangersix.1754:

In order to apply burning a Guardian also needs to perform a melee hit (purging flames aside, which also require your target to be close in melee range). He does not possess the means to apply long duration burning in one hit or to stack it.

No you don’t. You just walk up to them and use zealots flame. you do not even need to hit them.

Rangersix.1754:

A Guardian has far less means to apply burning to a target than any other class that has access to conditions. Also, the required momentum for other conditions to surpass burning is, as before, very low.

More rubbish, if you want a easier time applying then trait supreme justice. No other class in game can consistently apply burning passively every three attacks. Then to go further you can trait spirit weapons to apply burning as well.

It seems you just went to the gw2 wiki and looked at what skills apply burning. But didn’t take into consideration other factors.

Ghotistyx.6942:

You’ve actually mostly confirmed Obtena’s claim that burning is one of the better scaling and higher base damage conditions. The only caveat is stack intensity, which is where total bleeding, confusion, or torment will pull ahead. Otherwise, burning scales better and starts higher than any other “normal” condition.

Dealing critical damage assumes your attacks are even connecting. Burning can still damage when you’re off target.

I’m not necessarily saying burning will be better in any case, I’m just presenting food for thought. Burning builds do have their place, just not take working the confines if op’s criteria.

What I highlighted in bold is important, its what most people do not consider. Assuming ranger is talking about pve, his calculations on exist in the scenario where the target does not move away from the guardian. Therefore, its like that the guardian will land all of its attacks on the target.

In pvp, this isn’t the case. Guardian attacks are highly telegraphed and easy to avoid. So this is where his calculations fall apart, because there is no guarantee he will land half of his attack chains.

A condi guardian does not have this problem, in comparison a guardian can land a few attacks and still deal damage on the target while the the target tries to get out of attack range of the guardian. In comparison, condi guardian has a new problem that a zerker guardian does not: condi removal.

But for the most part it doesn’t really matter due to how easy it is to reapply burning. Also, what ranger doesn’t factor in his calculations when he compares burning to the other damaging conditions is easy of application.

Burning doesn’t suffer the same consequences as stacking conditions when its removed. Bleed for example when removed will reset the stacks to zero, so the user has to build up momentum again. Burning can just be reapplied and will do the exact same damage.

So there is a lot of variables that need to be considered when comparing things. Most just look at it as guardian vs training dummy and base their conclusions off that.

Let me guess, all of this is for pve?

Because if its not, then your whole theoretical analysis of ferocity vs condi damage falls apart quickly.

Lordrosicky.5813:

Aza.2105:

Blackjack.5621:

The reason why people complain about thieves is their high mobility paired with high damage and high surviveability

While wearing a zerker amulet.

That is why he said high damage I think ^^

Yeah I know. Its amazing though.

I personally feel the reason why its possible for the class to have high damage and high survivability at once is because their mitigation isn’t tied to any defensive stat.

Blackjack.5621:

The reason why people complain about thieves is their high mobility paired with high damage and high surviveability

While wearing a zerker amulet.

Yea so, using fgs on a target with retaliation is a stupid check. If you do it then you deserve to wipe.

You an strip the boon like you mentioned sure, but its easily reapplied. Likewise it should be true for npcs depending on their type.

spoj.9672:

300 dmg per retal tick would result in 20.4k damage to yourself with one fgs rush. Not really something you can heal through.

Would you use fgs rush on a player who is in a corner with a high duration of retaliation?

Exedore.6320:

Putting high up-time retaliation on everything in PvE to counter one ability is nowhere close to a good solution. Now you have to re-balance everything because different professions are affected to varying degrees by retaliation.

Actually, it wouldn’t be bad. Depending on the damage retaliation does, if it lets say does 300ish per hit. Then healing will counter this, meaning healing would become more useful in a group setting.

Merlin Dyfed Avalon.5046:

Wondering why ranger are able to pet swap on downed to get another after 1st died to use lick wounds.. over and over again.

Just wondering why this is possible?

cheers.

Bugged in spvp. In wvw if you interrupt the rangers pet they stop channeling. No idea why they have yet to fix it in spvp.

Keksmuffin.1450:

Aza.2105:

Keksmuffin.1450:

Why would you want spirit weps to get buffed? Why would you WANT to play with ai? :/

Sadly its part of the game, you can’t change that. Because of that it would be bad design to leave a set up skills in disarray because the community doesn’t like AI.

They would either have to change the skills entirely which won’t happen or they can simply make them worth using with the mechanics they have now.

@Sagat

Ray of Judgment wouldn’t make much sense, unless they remove the casting time.

The shield is pretty good in some PvE situations, the hammer would already be pretty strong if it wouldn’t be for all the traits you would have to take to make it useful. The bow has the coolest animation guardian has (VALID POINT!).

Nobody likes mm necro, nobody likes turret engis, I don’t get why people want spirit wep guard to be a thing.

On a sidenote something that could be interesting would be making them work similar to conjures (which are kinda gimmicky aswell but still really strong in PvE); stuff you could pick up that gives you a new skillbar. The skins for the spirit weapons already exist as weapon skins anways.

But since that would require them to come up with a bunch of reworked traits and a new skillbars for each weapon, something like this probably won’t happen.

In the original gw, the ritualist class had spirit weapons and weapon augment skills. They were weapon spells that augmented the users current weapon.

http://wiki.guildwars.com/wiki/Weapon_Spell

For example, sword of justice could augment great sword to do more damage for a bit, increase its cleave arcs and apply cripple when it hits. All for a brief period of time, lets say 10 secs with a 60 sec cd. Like wise shield of avenger could be changed to augment off hand shield to apply weakness when shield of judgement hits and increases the duration of skill 5 and makes it so that it follows around the user.

These are just examples of ideas though. But realistically its best to look at the pattern of Anet skills changes. I don’t feel they would ever rework anything from the ground up. So its better to just ask them to fix skills so they are usuable instead of having them stay broken.

Do I want more ai running around? No.
Do I want skills to stay broken because I don’t like ai? No

Its a tough choice, but ultimately I’d rather them just fix spirit weapons.

I think its better to say they are more efficient and taking advantage of the bad mechanics of the game. You can only be as skilled as your opposition. Currently the AI is very poor.

Keksmuffin.1450:

Why would you want spirit weps to get buffed? Why would you WANT to play with ai? :/

Sadly its part of the game, you can’t change that. Because of that it would be bad design to leave a set up skills in disarray because the community doesn’t like AI.

They would either have to change the skills entirely which won’t happen or they can simply make them worth using with the mechanics they have now.

@Sagat

Ray of Judgment wouldn’t make much sense, unless they remove the casting time.