Guild Wars 2

Sagat.3285:

Something is going to happen about spirit weapons and shield. Not sure about med or condition guard.

How do you know that? Or is it just a guess?

Evilek.5690:

All clas has V evade,vigor(engineer,elementalist->perma vigor) All other class has protection boon Thief does not.

Thief(s/d)

10.5k Base HP
Medium armor
Thief does not: protection,stability(only on Dagger Storm),passive HP regen,block,invurnerability.
Thief has: 2sec evade when he spend all invitiative/stealth+3/4 sec evade on heal skil every 15 sec , V evade, 12sec regen every 30 sec, 50% vigor up time and 12sec 1x might,swiftnes,fury every 22 sec.

Like I mentioned in one of my previous replies. The greatest form of mitigation you can have is not receiving damage at all. Thief has the highest uptime of not getting hit at all. And very tiny intervals between when all of their ability to do this is down. To fill in the gaps of downtime they can just simply leave the fight and wait for their initiative and endurance to be nearly recharged.

What needs to be done is S/D needs its windows of vulnerability greatly increased.

Medi guard doesn’t have any sustain. Aside from smite condition the other meditations have much too long of a cooldown to provide sustain.

Maybe you have a different definition of sustain and because of this I’m not seeing the point you are trying to make.

Kolly.9872:

Aza.2105:

2 secs of evade with initiative huh? You forgot to add in the evade from Withdraw and dodge. Thief has a extremely high vigor uptime. So that’s a lot of evade/dodge aka not being hit by damage.

ok the Thief gets about 11 seconds of evade in 1 minute (using Withdrow and Flanking Strike), wasting all the initiative bar and with the best initiative regen traits.

Warrior in comparison gets 10 second of damage immunity in 1 minute (using Shield Stance and Endure pain), without traits that improve the duration of those skills or reduce the cooldown.
But thief is OP cos it has “perma evade” right while Warriors just have more HP and better armor and the ability to stunlock someone to death.

Seriously, not saying warrior is OP but people should understand that the only survivability power on S\D thief relies exclusively on evasion, nerf it and you’ll kill that build.
And there are not so many other build a thief may use for being able to play in this meta.

You have to include all aspects.

Defy/Endure Pain: Is only physical damage immunity. They are still suspectible to CC and conditions.

Shield Stance: There are skills which are unblockable

There are no skills that can bypass evade.

Also, you have to take into consideration stealth too. That is another form of active mitigation. So is the ability to just teleport away in a x,y,z axis with infiltrator strike.

Another big thing you have to consider is the intervals of vulnerability. When a warrior uses their cooldowns it leaves a large interval of vulnerability to attack them. They ckittene shield block to help fill the interval some what, but it won’t be enough to bridge the gap between when defy/endure pain is back off cd.

With thief they have very small intervals where they are vulnerable. And they have many ways to fill in those intervals of vulnerability via escapes, stealth and a enormous access to vigor. I think this is the part most players tend to complain about indirectly.

Evilek.5690:

CntrlAltDefeat.1465:

To continue this point, you seem to dismissed what is the crux of my point. All mechanics in game to lesser or greater extends have counter play capacity. However in a biased control situation of where I can spam evade endlessly between attacks my opponent has little to no hope of ever defeating me. This currently is balanced by the simple fact that one cannot spam evades endlessly. So if we narrow the focus to be an opponent has a lot more evades than everyone else, it cannot be denied logically that the player does a good advantage. So if we take a typical set up rotation of shadow return, larceny, shadow return back, teleport in, larceny, retreat step, steal in, larceny, roll evade back, sword teleport in, larceny, sword retreat..the counter play people seem to be suggesting to me is position myself well. What part of good positioning is countering this rotation?. All I am doing is playing defensively. I am not actually countering anything. If you fire a missile at a military boat and the boat simply sails away from that landing spot, that is defense from good positioning. If they fire an anti airborne missile to destroy the incoming missile, that is countering. There is a difference and the two play style tactics are being considered the same, when they are not. As stated above evade on skill use do not get countered by typical cripple/chill conditions. Because these skills evade on use, skills like power block are also useless because even if you did hit, thieve’s do not have cool downs on weapon skills and you can’t interrupt teleports forcing a mesmer power block. So using the logic above that one cannot down a target they cannot hit, or one will have increased difficultly countering a target they have higher percentages of not hitting and following through with the other fact established, that thieve’s have a far greater load out of teleport, instant cast, no cool downs and evade on use skills, this only underlines the obvious..the counter play to them is virtually non existent and leads to my original established situation much earlier on. Your best defense (which is not counter play) is just move, stealth, teleport and make yourself an annoying target. However this is nothing more than the naval boat just sailing in circles making itself a hard target. It is not pressuring, or countering the attack at all. When the thieve knows your dodges and evades will run out a lot sooner than theirs, this firmly establishes advantage goes to them. Why does it go back to them?..because high evade has no counter. Only limited defense. In fairness I don’t want to see this thief destroyed, just to see that mechanic laws in game apply to all professions. Currently movement kittening skills don’t impact thief play and some mesmer play the same way they do every other profession. This is not nerfing, it is just making combat mechanics apply equally to all professions. If you still can’t grasp what I man, imagine this situation. All warrior burst/movement skills evade on use. Rush>>whirlwind attack>swap>shield bash>eviserate>bull’s rush>swap>100B(the only time u can hit them now)>whirlwind..It is not impossible currently with solid play and good keybinds to create thief s/d rotations thru teleports(can’t be interrupted) evade on use skills, roll for initiative, steal, roll of recovery etc to establish longish chains of extremely high evade chains while still being able to strike your opponent at the same time.

Thief use Flanking/Larcenous strike combo max 4x in row with all initiative regen traits maybe 4.5×.Evade is only on Flaking strike(0.5sec evade and 1+sec animation), Flanking strike + LA strike has 3sec(4×3=13sec total cast time) cast time and only 0.5sec evade -> 0.5sec evade every 3sec = 2sec evade on full initiative WOW. Where is your PERMA EVADE ?

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hC8SPipFMdk

2 secs of evade with initiative huh? You forgot to add in the evade from Withdraw and dodge. Thief has a extremely high vigor uptime. So that’s a lot of evade/dodge aka not being hit by damage.

Einlanzer.1627:

OlrunTheBlade.1486:

PvP: Pls no buffs to healing power. Bunkers last as long as they should already.
PvE: Buffing healing power changes nothing. Content needs to be more difficult to encourage people to use different stats.
WvW: I don’t kittening know, but it’s pretty bunky there already. I don’t think healing power buffs are a good idea here either.

TL;DR – Anet pls no healerino bufferinos

It changes the fact that the stat is all but useless. I don’t actually care if they buff healing power or make some bigger change to redesign it consolidate it, but something needs to be done.

Whats wrong with it?

Farzo.8410:

and the latest Grandmaster traits we got are really, really, really lackluster. No one used them, and no one would consider using them for serious gameplay, only for kitten and giggles.

Actually all the new traits are really good. The only problem is the guardian communities general perception of what the class is, therefore they feel the new traits are bad.

The only one that is debatable is purity of body, but I haven’t sat down to experiment with it long enough to give a objective view on it.

Guardian is a poor roamer, its manageable but its not the innate design of the class. The innate design of the class is a frontline ally supporter. Guardian is suppose to provide mitigation to their allies via boons and heals, bringing allies sustain up to guardian level.

While the ability to solo is possible, Anet purposely poked holes in this concept to prevent the class from becoming to powerful on the battlefield.

Thief lacks passive defense i.e passive regen, consistent access to regen boon and no access to protect boon. They also have medium armor and a low tier health pool.

From one perspective what Sagat is saying is true, but from another it looks like this:

Passive defenses:

• High armor rating can be combated with vulnerability. It only shaves off damage, lich form with 3400 armor still hits for 5k.

• Block has unblockable skills in place to counter balance it

• Passive regens can be combated with poison, like wise the regen boon

• Defensive boons such as protection, aegis, regen can be stolen or corrupted

Every passive defense has a counter measure set in place so it does not become too powerful.

Here is a look at active defenses:

Active Defenses

• Dodge has a endurance meter in place to prevent excess spamming, like wise weakness is in place to counter act endurance.

• Evade has no counter

The difference is huge between passive defense and active defense. To avoid damage entirely is the highest form of mitigation any class can have. So technically thief has the highest achievable mitigation in the game, its greater than high armor rating, greater than block, greater than passive regens.

The only problem it has is that you have to actively do it, which means if you don’t you go splat quickly. But as it stands thief has a very high and controllable rate of which they ckittene their active defense. Due to the initiative system not being bound to static cooldowns like the other seven classes.

Even with the highest armor, a guardian will become squishy if they go zerk. A thief on the other hand will not become squishy because of active defenses. Passive defensives scale with stats, active defenses do not and evade has no counter balance like the rest of the defenses in game.

I feel the solution is to simply introduce skills that bypass evade. This is my opinion, I’m sure others will differ.

Valtarius.8671:

Evan Lesh.3295:

making streak effects better show the attack arc.

YES PLEASE! but have it as an option in the game menu like how conditions can be changed

I agree streak effects sound like a great idea.

Kolly.9872:

So do you want to introduce another kind of mindless skill that requires even less skill than spamming AoE around without even get a target, just because it can hit anyway, no matter if the opponent dodge or not?

The counter to evade is called “good timing”, but you know what? It requires skill but people are too used to AI passive playstyles and AoE spamming thinking they are outplaying their opponents. Timing? what is it!! let’s just nerf the only active counter to this mindless button smashing that doesn’t even require a target to be effective.

I see a lot of problems with what you are saying here. The biggest being your use of good timing. Good timing is related to animation, its true that gw2 is suppose to be a animation observant game. But its all a lie, there are too many things that negate it being dependent on animations to be true. Lets look at a few of them:

• Asuras
• Massive amounts of particle effects from aoe
• Passive AI cluttering the screen
• Near instant animations that do not have a tell-tale sign but pack a lot of damage or utility

All of this is why the good timing scenario falls apart. In fighting games good timing works because there are only two characters on the screen that are central focus. With animations being categorized by its power rating. Weak attacks have fast animations, hard hitting attacks usually have long animations.

In gw2 this is not the case. Lets look at flanking strike. Its casting time is 1/2 sec. With latency it makes it unlikely that your “good timing” scenario is applicable. Looking at other evades such as withdraw, it doesn’t even have a casting time. The only instance where the case of good timing applies is with warrior. Since they are one of the only classes in the game that have animations you can counter play.

CntrlAltDefeat.1465:

There is no L2P issue when there is no counter to evade. Conditions can be countered, physical damage can be counter. Blocks can be negated with unblockable..what about high evade? there is no counter to high evade.

This is the biggest issue that most players tend to overlook. Going by what Anet said in their recent readyup about balance. Thief has no passive defenses, they only have active sustain aka evades and dodges. This is true. But when you look at the big picture in regards to passive defenses vs active defenses:

Passive defenses has ways to obstruct its function:

• Healing is countered by poison
• High armor is countered by vulnerability
• Defense boons such as prot and regen can be removed

So passive defenses has a definite counter. But when you look at active defenses:

• Dodge has weakness
• Evade has nothing

The difference between passive defense and active defense is quite large. What players need to understand is something simple: The greatest form of mitigation one can have is not getting hit at all.

High armor soaks up damage yes, but even lich form will hit a 3400 armored character for 5k. But with evades and dodges you can avoid hits like that entirely. This is what makes evade insanely powerful.

It makes even the most squishy character tanky because they aren’t receiving damage. Thief is the most complained about when it comes to evade simply because they have the option to choose when they want to evade instead of being bound to cooldowns. So this makes thief a non rotation based class, unorthodox in that regard.

The simple solution is to introduce across all eight classes ways to bypass evade. It can be one skill that does it or it can be a temporary buff like given to signet of strength that allows ones skills to bypass evade.

A mechanic that has no counter is toxic to the game. I can guarantee you that IF Anet introduced evade counter play among the eight classes then complaints about S/D would simply vanish.

Slayer.4238:

Look at this rank
Isn’t it neat?
Wouldn’t you think my life is complete?
Wouldn’t you think I’m the guy
The guy who has everything?
Look at this account
Treasures untold
How many achievements can one account hold?
Looking around here you think
Sure, he’s got everything
I’ve got CM and Orian boxes a-plenty
I’ve got exotic and ascended galore
You want WvW boosters?
I’ve got twenty!
But who cares?
No big deal
I want more!!!!!!!!!
I wanna be where the elitists are
I wanna see
Wanna see ‘em pawning’
Walkin’ around on those
Whad’ya call ‘em?
Oh – noobs
Switchin’ your builds you don’t get too far
Metas are required for playin’, winin’
Strollin’ along down a
What’s those words again?
reward track
Up where they walk
Up where they pawn
Up where they play all day in the (virtual) sun
Roamin’ all free
Wish I could be
Part of that world
What would I give
If I could live
With out these gibs?
What would I pay
To spend a day
havin fun while I play…
Betcha on hand
we’d understand
Bet they don’t reprimand their new players
Bright young newbies
Elites sick o’ lowbies’
Ready to stand
And I’m ready to know what the try hards know
Ask ‘em my questions
And get some answers
What’s a nuke build and why does it
What’s the word? Burn?
When’s it my turn?
Wouldn’t I love
Love to explore those ranks up above?
Out of glory
Wish I could be
Part of that world

LOL!

digiowl.9620:

Right now a guy in zerker is just as good a support as a guy in clerics, because only one boon is affected by healing power.

Only in pve. In pvp there is a significant difference.

Charak.9761:

Aza.2105:

Charak.9761:

mobs scale by 25% per nearby person

so if your dps is 50% less, that’s pretty hefty

Yea but its theoretical. There is a lot of numbers but they don’t take into consideration other variables. So its hard to know how big of a difference there would be between one party member wearing pvt vs zerk.

there are addons that show actual health of players/mobs

I’m not referring to the health of the mobs. I believe you about the scaling. When I say variables I’m roughly referring to intervals of time when you aren’t dpsing. Aka using healing skills, dodging etc.

Charak.9761:

mobs scale by 25% per nearby person

so if your dps is 50% less, that’s pretty hefty

Yea but its theoretical. There is a lot of numbers but they don’t take into consideration other variables. So its hard to know how big of a difference there would be between one party member wearing pvt vs zerk.

Sagat.3285:

There is no equal comparison between high and medium armor classes(period). If you don’t know that by know you haven’t learn your class. The lower the armor the higher and more effective the burst but the more rewarding the sustain glass ele>glass thief>glass war. You can’t compare reflect,immunity,quick dps to stealth(www),evade to GS mobilty it’s foolish.

The same goes for conditions the lower the armor the more types and applications can they dish out necro>thief>war it’s foolish trying to make it equal since the based stats are not the same.

How would health tiers fit into this idea?

I am by no means defending thief but if a lot of nerfs that are suggested in this thread were implemented then the class would be rendered unplayable.

There are a lot of cheesy elements about the class but I feel they mask underlining issues that most people tend to look over. The biggest one is their passive sustain, its non existent. With the except of the small intervals of sustain available via stealth.

Since they do not have the sustain of lets say a warrior or guardian, most of their mitigation comes through evades if they aren’t relying heavily on stealth. If evades were butchered then there is a chance that the class would never be played in tpvp again. I feel there are middle ground solutions, like introducing un-evadable skills with respectable cooldowns. That way there is some counter play.

But for the most part, I feel the class does its role adequately and if its taken away there won’t be anything else a thief player can contribute.

IvanTheGrey.2941:

Aza.2105:

IvanTheGrey.2941:

Aza.2105:

maha.7902:

blakdoxa.7520:

Selfish gear? What the hell are you guys on.
I understand wearing the zerk gear and that the combo gives significantly more damage than pvt, but I don’t get labeling pvt selfish gear.
It helps you survive plain and simple.

Read that back to yourself. It helps YOU survive. Berserker gear helps you dps quickly, improving the party survivability as you kill mobs faster.

True.

But what would be the difference in time it takes to kill lets say a pack of mobs if the guardian decided wear pvt over zerker? Does any one really know?

5o% faster, but Swifty could correct me more precisely.

So one person in pvt makes the run 50% slower?

I apologize for the misunderstanding. The 50% was the dps difference btwn PVT and Berserker gear in terms of dps. If all things are equal, the difference would probably be around 10% in a full group kill time. (50% additional time added on by 20% of your party=10% total time added on to the kill time of a mob)

No problem.

This makes more sense.

IvanTheGrey.2941:

Aza.2105:

maha.7902:

blakdoxa.7520:

Selfish gear? What the hell are you guys on.
I understand wearing the zerk gear and that the combo gives significantly more damage than pvt, but I don’t get labeling pvt selfish gear.
It helps you survive plain and simple.

Read that back to yourself. It helps YOU survive. Berserker gear helps you dps quickly, improving the party survivability as you kill mobs faster.

True.

But what would be the difference in time it takes to kill lets say a pack of mobs if the guardian decided wear pvt over zerker? Does any one really know?

5o% faster, but Swifty could correct me more precisely.

So one person in pvt makes the run 50% slower?

maha.7902:

blakdoxa.7520:

Selfish gear? What the hell are you guys on.
I understand wearing the zerk gear and that the combo gives significantly more damage than pvt, but I don’t get labeling pvt selfish gear.
It helps you survive plain and simple.

Read that back to yourself. It helps YOU survive. Berserker gear helps you dps quickly, improving the party survivability as you kill mobs faster.

True.

But what would be the difference in time it takes to kill lets say a pack of mobs if the guardian decided wear pvt over zerker? Does any one really know?

RyuDragnier.9476:

Aza.2105:

I feel healing power is a good stat, the only problem is (as you mentioned) that some healing skills do not scale well with the stat while others do. Guardian’s minor tier 2 trait selfless daring scales extremely well with healing power. But then a trait like altruistic healing scales poorly with healing power.

Likewise healing signet scales poorly with healing power, but has a high base healing. I think the devs should make all healing skills scale well with the stat. But I have a feeling they do not do this for the sake of balance.

It’s silly, considering that in order to get healing power up there, you either need to use armor for it which sacrifices damage output in most cases, or you need to put a full amount of points in the traitline for it, which again sacrifices damage output. I do understand their fear of people becoming too tanky though.

Well there has to be a sacrifice of a stat to gain more of another. So I think its fair and I wouldn’t say its a real issue. Since every other stat combination works the same way. Its just with healing power, it may be a bit more niche than the other stats.

I feel one issue is how players perceive healing power as a stat. It doesn’t necessarily increase healing output by enormous numbers but it does increase healing by a good amount depending on the skill/traits involved.

Would it be fair to ask for healing power to scale better with some skills? I don’t think so. But it will largely depend upon the class’s dominant role. If you look at past patch notes there have been several instances when Anet increased how healing scales with skills for guardian. But I haven’t really seen these type of changes with other classes.

My guess is that its for balance and that the team tries to change skill mechanics very carefully without creating severe imbalances that will hurt the game.

I feel healing power is a good stat, the only problem is (as you mentioned) that some healing skills do not scale well with the stat while others do. Guardian’s minor tier 2 trait selfless daring scales extremely well with healing power. But then a trait like altruistic healing scales poorly with healing power.

Likewise healing signet scales poorly with healing power, but has a high base healing. I think the devs should make all healing skills scale well with the stat. But I have a feeling they do not do this for the sake of balance.

Liewec.2896:

Aza.2105:

• Everyone is new to the server, match starts and its 5v5

the only problem with what you wrote XD
the games usually start 2v3 or 3v3 if you’re lucky with one team getting 4v3 when the next person joins, it usually takes afew minutes before the server fills, in which time the team with the most players is already winning and the spectator lameness starts

also Anet, will this “600 seconds between posts” nonsense ever end?
its been a week now…

You misunderstand, what you are quoting is hypothetical. I said it because one of the only times a match will start off 5v5 is when none of the players have played with each other before. Meaning, in their mind that there is a equal chance of winning.

After the first few mins of the match most players determine who the winners and the losers will be. They will either jump ship or quit the match all together. The next round is different, its then that most players will just try to stack on one team to ensure they aren’t on the losing side.

My man Evan doesn’t seem to be understanding the problem. Maybe because he isn’t playing hotjoin matches and is looking at it from a outside perspective. Rewards are irrelevant, its not the driving force to the current hotjoin problems. Its the winner/loser mentality, that no one wants to lose. Everyone wants to win win win.

Team swapping shouldn’t be allowed when the match starts. In addition leavers should be punished to discourage leaving when you are on the losing side. Many people may argue that this is harsh, since hotjoin should be casual and fun. But the reality is there is nothing fun about a 4v5 match.

In the original gw, one was punished for leaving a random arena match. So I don’t see why it would be a problem here. If you don’t want to lose then don’t pvp, its that simple. Since the nature of pvp is that someone is going to win and lose, losing is just part of the game.

Pregnantman.8259:

There has to be some personal or additional gain of us being behind our allies to cleanse them. Healing Breeze sort of addresses this by healing more, so should Cleansing Flames. After all, why should I run behind and try to keep my long channel on some ally for cleansing only if I can do that instantly and arguably better through Purging Flames, Absolute Resolution, Save Yourselves etc?

Its not a good comparison.

Purging flames cures 3 condi every 35 secs vs Cleansing Flame which has the potential to cure 9 condis every 15secs. One is a utility, one is a weapon skill.

You don’t always have to be behind them. You just have to face them in some way. This could mean that you are on the side of allies or perhaps you are facing a mob or a target while allies behind that target.

Argamir.3651:

I am playing a lot of guardian trying out a lot of different builds in PvP. This spell though, seems kind of weak to me. Sure, it does cleanse conditions on allies but using it against an enemy in a 1v1 situation is almost useless because of the low damage. When you have a sword you can better autoattack. My idea:

Increase the speed of the pulses
Apply 1 second of burning every time an enemy gets hit by a pulse
(Maybe) Apply 1 second of vigor on allies hit by a pulse (great synergy with the self-heal when applying boons to allies trait)

what do you think?

It doesn’t need a change. Cleansing flame is already powerful.

Its not about the damage, the damage is a secondary mechanic, while the condi clear is primary. Think of it as a ally ether renewal except instead of a heal, its damage:

Ether Renewal:

Heal yourself and cure a condition with every pulse.

Healing: 5,000 (1.2)
Cast time: 3 1/2
Cooldown: 15sec cd
Pluses: 8 (removes 1 condition per pulse)

Cleansing Flame:

Breathe magical flames that damage foes and cure conditions on allies.

Damage: Damage (10x): 1,000 (3.3)?
Number of Targets: 3
Pulses: 9 (removes 1 condition per pulse)
Range: 400
Cast time: 4 1/4 sec
Cooldown: 15 sec

sorudo.9054:

which kind, the traditional warrior or the clan samurai?
armor:
http://fc09.deviantart.net/fs70/i/2010/153/0/9/Samurai_by_Artigas.jpg
http://media-cache-ec0.pinimg.com/736x/92/80/ef/9280ef20c8ba6775d52976423aabd7d7.jpg

robe:http://3.bp.blogspot.com/_Auq2mVGXix0/TRgxTYHvzRI/AAAAAAAAA8I/kNd-5EferHc/s320/5RONIN_WOLVERINE_P2.jpg
http://fc09.deviantart.net/fs43/i/2009/159/e/3/samurai_032_by_dinmoney.jpg

i much prefer the robes

I had something like this in mind:

http://cdn4.fashionablygeek.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/05/samurai-armor-4.jpg

Evan Lesh.3295:

At what point are you seeing players join teams from spectator mode? Rewards are based on time played on a team, so are people forgoing partial rewards to be on the winning team?

This is not the problem.

The problem is players not wanting to lose. So they switch teams or try..not matter what the rewards are. Here is a typical example of what goes on in hotjoin:

• Everyone is new to the server, match starts and its 5v5

• In the first 2mins blue obliterates red on center point then proceed to take other points

• Two people from red quit, one goes to spectator

• Auto balance happens and some one from blue goes to red, then the guy who quit red goes to blue

• The original blue player doesn’t like being switched so he goes to spectator, its 3v5 again. Auto balance happens and another blue is forced to go to red. The original blue player returns to his team. The match is still 4v5

• Someone new joins the server and finally red team has a 5th man.

• After losing once to 3 people ganging up on him, he leaves the server. Its 4v5 again

• Match finally ends with the score of 500 to 90

This is how the typical hotjoin game plays these days. I see a lot of people say GG after the match, I’m guessing 4v5 is a good game in their eyes since 4v5 is now the standard match. Its sad because no matter what server you go to it always ends up happening.

I currently use a 8350@ 4.7ghz. It performs fine, not better than high end intel cpus. But in comparison the 8350 is a lot older than the current chips intel has available.

From my experience gw2 is the only game that I play that has such a large difference in performance between intel and amd. In a patch several months ago Anet made some optimizations and I got around a 14fps boost on average. That’s not too bad.

Obtena.7952:

Is this another one of those threads where people compare Guardians to Warriors because the both have heavy armor, so logically, Guardians should be as good as warriors in every aspect of the game?

Why, yes it is.

Don’t forget how they ignore all of guardian strengths.

Mace might be comparable if you drop symbol of faith while auto attacking. Maybe even more comparable if you take symbol of persistence.

Also, mace will out dps sword in large zergs with communal defense and shattered aegis.

Bullet,

Its never going to happen. Like bash said the devs want guardian to be the first into combat and last out. The class is never going to get a way to disengage, ever. Its just how it is.

I feel that they designed guardian around the core idea that they will be using amulets like cleric, knights or soldiers for sustain. This is why when guardian goes zerker, their seems to be a lot of negatives that stop them from being too good. They referred to this as holes in roles….meaning there are intentional designs that prevent a class excelling too much in certain areas.

For guardian its:

1. Mobility
2. No options to disengage
3. Boon oriented…without them they start to become considerably weaker
4. Relies heavily on defensive cooldowns such as shelter, meditations etc…when they are recharging guardians become weak.

Warriors being able to disengage similar to a thief isn’t a intended part of their class design according to devs. They said specifically that warrior has a little bit to mobility at this time. So I expect sometime down the line their gap closers will be changed.

Warrior is suppose to be like guardian in the sense that they have health sustain, damage sustain, heavy armor and forms of mitigation to keep them in your face for the fight. Meaning they are designed to charge into a fight and only leave when the fight is over.

Right now this statement isn’t really true. With GS and other warrior gap closers such as savage leap, bulls charge and shield bash they can disengage fairly quickly. In some instances it may be greater than thief’s escape abilities due to their high health sustain. And that just isn’t right.

So when the time comes and you guys see skills like rush nerfed, don’t make complaints on the forum. Since you should know its coming.

Charak.9761:

can do the same with a hammer, dunno why people keep using that argument for shield… you’re using one weapon simply for one classes utility skill… much value.

Zealot’s Embrace is a channeled spell, it will follow the thief if casted before stealth, if you can get a fire sigil proc you can see his location, then banish him.

Zealot’s Embrace has a 1 sec cast time, Shield of Absorption cast time is almost instant. Its a big difference.

I don’t think shield is trash, I try to look at it from a game mechanic stand point. Shield is like having two utility skills on weapon slots. That’s not a bad deal depending on the situation.

So give us samurai armor Anet! It would be great for heavy armor classes.

I agree with most of what you are saying. I feel its a tad weak….but then you have to look on the flip side. That purity of body can be shared with allies via battle presence. So I think the trait my be balanced around the possibility of guardians running that trait combination.

It definitely needs to be buffed, but by how much I can’t really say. Do you know if signet of stamina and purity of body stack? If it does imagine if purity of body was buffed to 50% and guardian running it with a signet of stamina warrior in group. In pvp this might cause complaints.

warriorjrd.8695:

The reason you were wrong, is because looking at the statement I bolded, you are under the impression a guardian is taken into wvw purely for heals and support. It’s astonishing you think that an ele could ever replace a guardian just because it could theoretically outheal a guard.

I never was thinking this, but you assumed this was what I was saying. Its not.

What I’m trying to say is, sure a guardian can potentially heal the most, but if they spec for that, they won’t do much else. Where as an ele can heal and support as well as do other things.

Yes. But ele can always do other things. They are the kings of versatility. But you can sort of see what I’m saying here. I’m not comparing build vs build since there is no guarantee everyone is running the same build. I’m looking at it from the perspective of the class mechanics.

For example looking at the class mechanics, I can say guardian’s torch out performs any all condi removal ele has. 9 conditions removed on a 15 sec cd. But you do not see a lot of players run a torch to do this.

Also, I’m not looking at it a wvw point of view. I’m looking at it in general.

warriorjrd.8695:

That is wrong on so many levels. Guardians are necessary for the melee train in wvw, warriors cannot survive without guardians.. A basic guardian set up gets heals on dodge, empower, staff 2, and that’s it. The rest of the quick heals come from warrior shouts and water blasts. Just because a guardian CAN go full healer, doesn’t mean it would ever be the most effective. An ele can support with almost as much condi cleanse as a guardian, provide the vital water fields, as well as bring AOE damage and CC to a group. You may not count the blasts from the ele’s fields as the ele’s heals, but the blasts only happened because of him/her dropping the water.

In wvw guild play Elementalist heals more than a guardian.

I’m failing to see how I’m wrong on so many levels…….

If ele could take over guardians role as support, then guardian wouldn’t be sought out to provide support for groups. I see what you are saying and I’m not disagreeing with most of what you are saying but..

It seems to me that the basic guardian build that you have in mind does not heal more than general ele wvw build. This maybe true but this does not mean ele heals for more, it just means the build they run provides more healing than the basic guardian build. Selfless daring, empower, and orb of light are only a small fraction of guardian’s healing capabilities.

I totally disagree with the statement of ele being able to provide as much condi removal for allies as guardian. From my understanding of each class, its not even close. But as I said, it might be true for specific guardian builds but not all.

I want to make it known that I’m speaking in general about class mechanics, were as you are talking about specific builds.

Reikou.7068:

The removal of energy was obviously a PvE decision.

Maybe.

The energy system isn’t totally gone. It was transformed into Thief’s initative mechanic. Originally initiative was a guardian class mechanic but it was given to thief instead.

Maskaganda.2043:

Aza.2105:

8k dodge roll? What?

water attunement + dodge roll. 2x 3900~, once for attuning to water, once for dodging. considering about 1k healing power, benevolence stacks, monk runes and aquatic benevolence as I have on my ele.

So the amount of healing skills/sources does matter then?

8k dodge roll? What?

Burning is so easy to apply as guardian that I don’t see how condi removal is a problem.

I don’t expect to ever see guardian with wide access to other conditions besides burning, vulnerability, immobilize and weakness. The class has conditions…just not offensive ones and that is ok.

I feel that since amplified wrath was introduced that condi guardian as a whole is much more viable than ever before. The biggest problem is how burning can just be override. They need to change conditions so that who ever does the most condi damage for that condition has priority.

If they did that, then burning guardians would definitely be more noticeable in groups.

Maskaganda.2043:

Aza.2105:

Maskaganda.2043:

Aza.2105:

Maskaganda.2043:

Im pretty sure you can’t outheal a staff ele with the new water gm trait. add in some benevolence sigil and monk runes and you’re looking at 40%+ outgoing heals.

between soothing mist and regen alone my ele does over 500hps to others. attuning to water and dodging does some 8k heal and its doable every 10 seconds. geyser does about 1900 per tick, 3 ticks. and then there’s both water fields, blastable by both you and your allies.

However, healing by itself is pretty meaningless, at least in wvw. You need to bring something else to the group besides healing alone. A guardian will be capable of having great healing while providing everything you need in a group with the exception of fury; no other support class/build gets close to that, especially in regards to stability.

Guardian’s healing breeze out does every ally heal elementalist has in its entire skill set. I’ll say this again, ele is not even close to the amount of healing guardian can do. The only time they have a advantage is at range since guardian isn’t a ranged class.

I’m unconviced by that. Geyser alone has half the cooldown and is a water field. In a group situation that water field will heal for a whole lot more than the slight difference in the ammount directly healed between geyser and healing breeze. Besides, shelter is pretty much mandatory for a guardian.

Shelter is not mandatory, its a option.

When you factor in water fields then that is not elementalist healing, who ever does the blast is considered the healer not the elementalist.

I think its a bit far fetched to believe that elementalist is even close to guardian’s healing ability. Elementalist heals are pretty much limited to their weapon sets and a few limited trait options. While guardian has healing on weapon sets, traits and utilities.

You can view a comprehensive list of guardian healing here:

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

You can also view the ally healing.

the elementalist can blast the water field too but you can’t consider things in a vacuum. just because the green numbers don’t come from the ele when others blast, the ele is still the source of the water field. stuff gets healed because the ele did something.

You don’t need to tell me about guardian traits and skills. I play both my guardian and ele as support with very similar gear setups, the ele massively outheals the guardian, trust me, it really isn’t a competition; I could just autoattack with staff water 1 for 900+ aoe hp every 3/4 sec; not that I do it often, but its a possibility when needed.

BUT I rarely get to play the ele as guardian is a superior choice most of the times (in a 5 man wvw group) ; as I said before, by itself healing doesn’t mean much, you need to bring some more stuff to the group. And while the ele brings some nice fields, aoe, cleanses, cc and some boons… stab and protection from a guard plus the innate tankiness of heavy armor makes it a way better choice generally.

I disagree entirely, ele can heal better at range…that’s about it.

A few guard healing abilities that affect allies:

1. Communal defense + Pure of Heart
2. Selfless Daring
3. Faithful Strike
4. Writ of the Merciful
5. Healing Breeze
6. Merciful Intervention
7. Empower
8. Battle Presence with Vor
9. Shield of Absorption/Detonate
10. Sanctuary

If elementalist could out perform guardian with support (this includes heals and boons) then guardian would have no role. But this is clearly not the case.

When you mention healing with ele you can only mention it coming from a couple sources, because that’s all ele has. When I talk about healing with guardian I’m pointing out how their healing capability comes from a multitude of sources. Notice I didn’t even factor in tome of courage.

I agree with what you are saying about healing not being much own its own. Its the combination of many different elements that provides the group sustain. Healing is just one of the mechanics.

Maskaganda.2043:

Aza.2105:

Maskaganda.2043:

Im pretty sure you can’t outheal a staff ele with the new water gm trait. add in some benevolence sigil and monk runes and you’re looking at 40%+ outgoing heals.

between soothing mist and regen alone my ele does over 500hps to others. attuning to water and dodging does some 8k heal and its doable every 10 seconds. geyser does about 1900 per tick, 3 ticks. and then there’s both water fields, blastable by both you and your allies.

However, healing by itself is pretty meaningless, at least in wvw. You need to bring something else to the group besides healing alone. A guardian will be capable of having great healing while providing everything you need in a group with the exception of fury; no other support class/build gets close to that, especially in regards to stability.

Guardian’s healing breeze out does every ally heal elementalist has in its entire skill set. I’ll say this again, ele is not even close to the amount of healing guardian can do. The only time they have a advantage is at range since guardian isn’t a ranged class.

I’m unconviced by that. Geyser alone has half the cooldown and is a water field. In a group situation that water field will heal for a whole lot more than the slight difference in the ammount directly healed between geyser and healing breeze. Besides, shelter is pretty much mandatory for a guardian.

Shelter is not mandatory, its a option.

When you factor in water fields then that is not elementalist healing, who ever does the blast is considered the healer not the elementalist.

I think its a bit far fetched to believe that elementalist is even close to guardian’s healing ability. Elementalist heals are pretty much limited to their weapon sets and a few limited trait options. While guardian has healing on weapon sets, traits and utilities.

You can view a comprehensive list of guardian healing here:

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

You can also view the ally healing.

Maskaganda.2043:

Im pretty sure you can’t outheal a staff ele with the new water gm trait. add in some benevolence sigil and monk runes and you’re looking at 40%+ outgoing heals.

between soothing mist and regen alone my ele does over 500hps to others. attuning to water and dodging does some 8k heal and its doable every 10 seconds. geyser does about 1900 per tick, 3 ticks. and then there’s both water fields, blastable by both you and your allies.

However, healing by itself is pretty meaningless, at least in wvw. You need to bring something else to the group besides healing alone. A guardian will be capable of having great healing while providing everything you need in a group with the exception of fury; no other support class/build gets close to that, especially in regards to stability.

Guardian’s healing breeze out does every ally heal elementalist has in its entire skill set. I’ll say this again, ele is not even close to the amount of healing guardian can do. The only time they have a advantage is at range since guardian isn’t a ranged class.

Guardian is the best, followed by Elementalist at a distant second.

Depends how they implement them. My opinion is that they should add elites for each weapon set per class. But they shouldn’t make them like the ones we currently have. But more so like the original gw. Where its similar to a normal skill but with extra benefits.

For example, guardian hammer elite could function similar to mighty blow except it also applies aoe immobilize with a 40 sec cd.

Yea I’ve tested it a lot in heart of the mists, it can hit for 2.2k. But the numbers vary from target to target. Meaning, one shattered aegis may hit for 2.2k, another may not crit at all.

Shattered aegis hits for around 2.2k if it crits.