Guild Wars 2

Ameepa.6793:

Yes please so I can get rid of the effect once I have it

They could put a check box on trinkets/rings/neck just like they have for helm, backpack, gloves and shoulders. If they were crafty, they could also make infusion effects turn off when you hide the piece with the infusion in it.

The full list of items are:
+9 Agony Infusion
Cube of Dark Energy
Golden Fractal Relic
Integrated Fractal Matrix
Unstable Cosmic Essence

If you ran Nightmare CM a lot, none of it should be hard except the Cosmic Essence.

Benjamin Arnold.3457:

We also have some bug fixes incoming that should help alleviate some pain points at the higher tiers as well.

Does that include making the floor fall at 15% or 40%? I know it’s been said that it is supposed to be 40%, but that it a Long time to be dodging the floor with anomalies showing up and having the floor possibly disappear from under them.

Another inconsistency of this fight is the triple orb attack that bounces and leaves puddles. Mesmer feedback and Guardian Shield #5 do not destroy the projectile meanwhile CPC and swirling winds do. I am so confused at the inconsistencies with projectile destruction in this game, and then they add on that even the same type of destruction doesn’t work.

Shaogin.2679:

How are you seeing that. For large hitboxes, all the builds above it are Ele builds, making it the second highest damaging class for large hitboxes.

Ele is above it, then when you look at small hitbox both thief and engi are above what guard can do on large.

Cyninja.2954:

Azoqu.8917:

- Support class not even used as support (and I believe we’re 2nd last in DPS as well)

Actually guardian is 2nd highest in damage to large hitboxes and 7th in damage to small hitboxes with some of the easiest rotations available on damage builds:

http://qtfy.eu/benchmarks/

Don’t know what you see, but I see Guardian as 8th DPS on that list and is 4th for large hitboxes (Ele, Engineer, and Thief are all higher).

Rising Dusk.2408:

Azoqu.8917:

Double the DPS but 2nd lowest DPS in the game so pretty useless especially since it brings nothing to the table.

Thank you. You’re absolutely right, which helps make my point that the defensive utility of Distortion on the Mesmer isn’t even remotely the driving factor in why you bring them to raids when something very comparable but slightly different on a DH doesn’t even remotely justify their presence in a group. Alone without any of the other shiny things a Mesmer brings it just wouldn’t be enough to justify their usage, and that clearly indicates how it is not even close to OP in its current form.

If anything it shows that it is OP because the Mesmer is not brought for distortion but has it anyhow in addition to what it actually brings. And why would you bring a Guardian for Shield of Courage/distortion type effect when a Mesmer, who is brought anyhow, does the same better?

Rising Dusk.2408:

DH also achieves more than double the DPS of a Mesmer who traits everything into getting every possible Distortion share, so you know, there’s that.

Double the DPS but 2nd lowest DPS in the game so pretty useless especially since it brings nothing to the table.

Rising Dusk.2408:

If that short list is seriously all that some people think it takes to make Distortion any more OP than Shield of Courage

5 second cool down, 60 second cool down.
Aoe, directional.

Though I guess 1 second and 3 seconds is something!

zealex.9410:

lol are you ppl blind have you seen shooshadoo and flames of war?

FoW makes you throw a candle holder for Guardian Torch #4. It is funny but I do miss the giant blue fireball at times.

Concerning Eureka, I stand by my idea that it should have an on crit shard explosion effect like the sharks/ravens. Mace is not an often used weapon and attacks slow enough that it wouldn’t be too annoying.

Kuya.6495:

Would be nice to get an answer from a dev about the mechanical or balance reason why that’s the case

Because “Guardians are in a good spot.” Honestly, the lack of care can be attributed to the fact that Guardians have mostly stayed the same since the game began while every other class has received many changes. Here is some of my favorite points showing that Anet believes Guardian is fine or needed to be ragged on forever to change (and other annoyances):

- Aegis/other blocks all being blown at the same time (this thread topic)
- Cooldowns of support skills are atrocious when compared to what classes received in HoT or in other buffs. eg. Signet of Mercy vs “Search and Rescue”
- Empowering Might vs Phalanx Strength cooldowns
- Anet missed the fact that Sword and Scepter didn’t have symbols for 3 years
- Greatsword #3 and #4 placement swap (old news but was really annoying for ~2 weeks)
- Support class not even used as support (and I believe we’re 2nd last in DPS as well)
- Spirit Weapons
- Only class that can never get away from having condi damage (VoJ) and doesn’t have a condi build

Just some of the highlights. I swear this class gets by because the people who play it are more helpful in nature than people who play other classes.

Edit: Also forgot the fact that the first minor in Zeal is still named Zealot’s Speed for when it used to drop Symbol of Swiftness in beta but was never renamed when the symbol was changed and when Symbolic Avenger was introduced and bugged they disabled it so fast yet other completely busted things get left in until the next patch (just a minor annoyance of inconsistency).

TexZero.7910:

skarpak.8594:

TexZero.7910:

Show me a mechanic in raids currently that ignores distortion, please.

I’ll wait.

Already applied conditions.
Gors World Eater.
Escord mines.
Xera Magic Dome.
Deimos Ward Attack.
KC bombs.
Cairn sweep (reddit, can’t confirm right now).

…not sure about MO spears / cm blue fields, but yeah.

do you even raid mate, let alone do you play mesmer?

What even is your list….of them 4 are Raid wipes and 1 of them is wrong, you can distort Deimos Ward, you can also just use a block.

Gors World Eater
KC bombs
Xera Magic Dome
Deimos Ward Attack

Carin Sweep can be distorted….Do you even mesmer ?

That leaves Escort mines…okay so 1 thing which you’ll never run into as a raid mechanic.

Congrats you have 1 thing that ignores it that isn’t a guarenteed Raid Wipe specific mechanic ?

Just so you know, Deimos ward is only blockable and can’t be invulned. The reason people still distort it is because Saul will melee you out of your aegis just as it goes off at times (also the fact that tears used to remove aegis on CM but no longer do).

Besides that everything else is a pure wipe mechanic and makes sense to ignore distort. In fact the only one that Mesmers can complain about ignoring distort is Deimos (though they still have aegis to give out so…) because everything else that ignores it also ignores aegis and dodges. There is also the fact that distort ignores Sabatha’s Flame Wall which is also supposed to be a wipe mechanic.

Rain.7543:

For the comment that mesmer is the most played class in raids… just lol. Are we playing in the same community? Every grp -ever- struggles with finding chronos and druids, while you get dps classes in hordes.

It is true that Mesmers and Druids (though cranger is dime a dozen) are hard to find. This has more to do with what the classes are decribed as originally and what mentality of players are gravitated to them than how hard they are to play or what role they play in a group. Way back when elite specs were first being annonced and shown to the player base, Guardians were furious that they were getting a DPS spec and not a support spec and Rangers were utterly confused why they were getting a healing one. The types of players who play those classes were getting something they didn’t sign up for that class to do.

The vast majority of people who roll a Ranger do not do so to heal people. They do it for the pet aspect and long range DPS because of the bow (they think Ranger means range while it is actually refering to a park ranger). On the flip side, people who roll Guardian did it because it was supposed to be the Monk/Healer/Tank class of the game. They are not in the game to deal damage, but to help their allies. So if you gave a viable healing spec to Guardian, healers would become super easy to find. If you gave a buff spec to Guardians, buffers would be super easy to find. Since Guardian can do neither of those roles, the people who want to play support either have to roll another class (and probably hate how that class plays mostly) or just play DPS.

How does this translate to Mesmer? Well I’m fairly certain no one rolled Mesmer pre-expansion to play support, so Mesmer mains probably don’t want to be shoved into the support role but they are forced to, so they probably swapped to a DPS class because swapping from a DPS to support mentality is way harder than swapping from support to DPS mentality.

Though if the rumors are true, all of this is moot in a few months as Mesmers will not be the only choice for insane DPS buffing and we can get rid of the pre-madonnas.

TexZero.7910:

Cyninja.2954:

The availability and bottleneck of mesmers and especially chronotanks begs to differ.

Has nothing to do with the ease of play.

Tank has always been one of the least desirable playstyles.

I personally love playing tank, but I want to play it on my plate wearing Guardian, not a mage.

TexZero.7910:

Lol I like the attempted ad hominem, but it’s wrong.

I literally fill every role required. Mesmer is no more difficult to time or use to abuse mechanics than ele using obsidian flesh to destroy sloths projectiles.

Amen to that. Everyone in my raid group that plays Mesmer says it is super easy because you only have to concentrate for 4 seconds while you do the important part and then not care for a while. Also, everyone can’t wait for Firebrand and if the rumors are true with it being quickness/burn bot than one more person will be freed from playing Mesmer (since I Guardian main, and man do I want to be able to play support like this class should).

Concerning distort, it is completely busted since it allows you to ignore mechanics entirely. The Well is also busted since any Guardian would kill to have a 30s CD 3x Aegis application skill. Oh and it gives alacrity and stability. Well holy kitten. When you look at the well, it makes Daemos CM a lot easier than it should be. Try using a Guardian for Aegis instead of that well when the tears still stripped Aegis, Mesmers would just distort the tears while Guardians (which you wouldn’t use anyhow since the “boon” class does nothing nowadays) would just cry as a shard came in.

And to the Mesmers talking about Shield of Courage, did you forget that it is:
1. Directional based.
2. No one stands in it and the Guardian has to move in order to get people in it.
3. Is a block so it is ignored by so many mechanics.
4. Has an atrocious cool down compared to distorting.
5. Has a super tiny range.
6. On a class that doesn’t bring anything to the raid.

zealex.9410:

CptAurellian.9537:

zealex.9410:

Which is?

Spreading buffs more evenly.

like a new moght stacker and a new quickness generator?

Other classes besides warrior can stack 25 might easily. Both ele and ranger come to mind. The reason you still take warrior though is because it has Banners and EA. Those are the two buffs that need to be spread out more than they are.

Another quickness generator is rumored to be coming for the Guardian. It doesn’t have alacrity but if it can do enough damage to make up for the DPS lost from Alacrity, than you don’t need it and can take either quickness stacker.

Illconceived Was Na.9781:

There is a good point lost in the text: people have been playing a long time. The game needs to evolve to maintain their interest and that probably includes new drops in older zones.

I totally agree with new drops in old zones. It would be nice if every map had an exotic set that was only found within that map and had a theme that matched the map. Queen’s Dale could have very peasant weapons: a Butcher’s Cleaver for an axe, a Pitchfork for a staff (yes I know of Peasants Solution, but an example). It would add some extra spice to all the zones.

Wolfric.9380:

Burn guard is one of the most dangerous builds in solo Q.

This is so true. Lots of people forget the fact that meta builds are meta because they do well in a 5v5 preconstructed format. When you solo queue, you need a build that can carry more than anything, and sometimes it’s a build that isn’t meta. The sheep will deny it’s viability but anyone worth their salt will know to look out for it.

ArthurDent.9538:

Cynz.9437:

Azoqu.8917:

Cynz.9437:

Crinn.7864:

Cynz.9437:

Crinn.7864:

Cynz.9437:

Reaper Alim.4176:

Crinn.7864:

Shockwave.1230:

For 1 season just try implementing no thief stacking, please.

You are allowing for really awkward situations when both players can’t multi-class

I pretty sure Anet’s solution is too keep nerfing thief counters every patch until thief stacking becomes meta.

LMAO, pretty much. Incoming META in 9 months….. 3 Thieves, 1 Engi, and 1 Guardian. Guess I’m going to have to start learning Thief now aggh..

This is actually wrong. Anet has been buffing thief counters (see DH patch notes) and nerfing thief every patch so far after initial buff to AA (once again read patch notes). The only reason why thief is viable again is because we moved away from bunker horror of s1 and revs got nerfed thus allowing thieves to play again. This will probably all change anyway once xpac comes out.

The number of nerf/buff doesn’t matter, what matters is the class’s position in the metagame. Every single patch in the last year has moved thief up in the metagame.

The most recent major balance patch was a buff to thief despite including thief nerfs. Why? Because the stability change combined with the introduction of Sigil of Absorption made thieves far more effective.

Also DH hasn’t been buffed in over a year, idk what you are tripping on.

Read patch notes /facepalm

No DH uses a staff. The buffs in prior patches only affected core guard and not DH.

Read patch notes -_-’

You’re right, mace also got buffed but if you get hit by faithful strike for the healing to proc, you’re terrible.

Once again, read patch notes -_-

He is referring to the the addition of revealed to spear of justice. With that being said it was a tiny change compared to the many nerfs dh has suffered over that time. They have been on a whole significantly nerfed making thief stronger.

Oh I knew he was referring to the spear change. Though when he said to read the patch notes, he should have said the previous patch because anyone who didn’t know about the spear would refer to the patch that had just come out and how nothing effects the Guardian vs Thief dynamic in that one.

Though your point about them being significantly nerfed is so true. Ever since the game was released, Guardian has been the class that just kills thieves without thinking about it. This has always been the case, and when DH came out and thieves complained about it killing them, I laughed. Not because DH killed thieves really well, but because nothing changed between the two classes so there was no reason to complain to begin with since even a base Guardian killed them. Ever since then, DH received constant nerfs to the point where they don’t kill thieves super easily (nothing wrong with making it a balanced matchup). The main problem that arises because of that is Thieves’ counter no longer keeps them in check.

So it says something if a class gets constant nerfs yet has managed to become meta. I believe the message is the class is OP but had something that kept them in check that now no longer does that.

Edit: Not saying Thieves are OP, I personally find them annoying but not OP, but without the nerfs they would have been OP.

Illconceived Was Na.9781:

Yeah, even without any MF, scaled up events are still among the most profitable and yet people tend to go for the the flashier drops. Post Karka Queen steampipe beats the next World Boss, the Covington pre-events have more loot than the Hydra Queen, & Coiled Watch is more profitable than FGS event train (even post-nerf). And those are all more lucrative with higher MF. One of my favorites remains the pre-events to the Ulgoth, which are available frequently outside the WB (lots of mid-tier leather from supply bags).

And the most profitable events in the game are (IMO) defense of Arah, 2nd beacon, and post Grenth defending. Equip the almighty loot stick, permeating wrath, and spam your way to loot raining from the sky.

The true problem is the fact that power/precision/ferocity all start at 1000 and condi/expertise start at 0. All skills in the game have a percent modifier attached to them (a skills with a 0.2 damage modifier does 200 damage with base power, but 400 damage with +1000 power from gear) for power, meanwhile conditions have a base amount and scale differently based on gear. Bleeding scales from 22 to 82 with 1000 condi meanwhile burning scales 131 to 286 with 1000. The difference is +272% compared to 118%. This brings up problems of certain classes scaling like crap with condi (and by certain classes, it really is just Guardian), meanwhile others scale way better.

A better way to fix condi would be to make all condition not have a base value and scale off condition damage entirely. So if bleeding had a scaling of 0.04 it would do 40 a tick with no condi damage and 80 at +1000 condi damage which is the same that power scales. Than you could have expertise work the same, so if a skill that currently last 5s would than have a scaling factor of 0.005 so if you stacked expertise to +1000 you’d have 10s. You could than let it go over the cap of 100% since all stats help equally per point.

Cynz.9437:

Crinn.7864:

Cynz.9437:

Crinn.7864:

Cynz.9437:

Reaper Alim.4176:

Crinn.7864:

Shockwave.1230:

For 1 season just try implementing no thief stacking, please.

You are allowing for really awkward situations when both players can’t multi-class

I pretty sure Anet’s solution is too keep nerfing thief counters every patch until thief stacking becomes meta.

LMAO, pretty much. Incoming META in 9 months….. 3 Thieves, 1 Engi, and 1 Guardian. Guess I’m going to have to start learning Thief now aggh..

This is actually wrong. Anet has been buffing thief counters (see DH patch notes) and nerfing thief every patch so far after initial buff to AA (once again read patch notes). The only reason why thief is viable again is because we moved away from bunker horror of s1 and revs got nerfed thus allowing thieves to play again. This will probably all change anyway once xpac comes out.

The number of nerf/buff doesn’t matter, what matters is the class’s position in the metagame. Every single patch in the last year has moved thief up in the metagame.

The most recent major balance patch was a buff to thief despite including thief nerfs. Why? Because the stability change combined with the introduction of Sigil of Absorption made thieves far more effective.

Also DH hasn’t been buffed in over a year, idk what you are tripping on.

Read patch notes /facepalm

No DH uses a staff. The buffs in prior patches only affected core guard and not DH.

Read patch notes -_-’

You’re right, mace also got buffed but if you get hit by faithful strike for the healing to proc, you’re terrible.

Bigpapasmurf.5623:

flog.3485:

Sure Dh is such an OP class that every top players pick /s Don’t mindlessly spam your skills, take notice of the skills a Dh uses and you will see it is not an OP class. It was obviously OP as hell before with daze on traps but they already have had a series of nerfs, it is fine now.

Screw traps, burn DH is frigging unbalanced. I picked it up for PvP recently and am dominating in my matches.

I think this has more to do with the fact that Guardian has multiple ways it can play compared to other classes. You have traps, symbolic, support, and burn. Lots of teams get destroyed by the burn Guard because they are not expecting it since it still seems to be flying under the radar.

I will agree though that Permeating Wrath needs to be looked at. The fact that it scales to group wiping from meh is pretty insane. The skill should just make you proc burn on every attack but get rid of the AoE portion of the skill. This way it would work consistently. You know there is something wrong when you take it to WvW and 5v15 a group because they all burn to death (I was unorganized and the others were following a tag, also I got a shout out in their team chat a guild mate told me). PM just seems to hit a critical point where if you’re not CC’d constantly, everyone dies.

The easiest solution to all of this is just to make the commitment buff increase by 1 pip for each week you WvW until it caps out at between 5-7. This lets those who are newer actually receive rewards instead of hitting them with such a huge wall that they will lose interest and the game mode will go back to a twitching corpse. The other thing it does is rewarding those that WvW on a consistent basis than those who just show up every once in a while.

The Ace.9105:

Imagine the amount of cry if raids gave you 5g as a reward because that’s only elite content for the top 1% of pve players who can play this game.

Man 5g for raids! I wish it was that good! Sadly it is only 2g so meh. I guess if you count all the bosses in a raid it would equal 6g, but than you have to remember that you spend ~1g per 30 minutes on buffs.

And GW2 is a PvE game by default so I’m not really surprised that it gives out way more than PvP. And with how much CC/condi cancer is in the game, I’m amazed that there is a decent time on queues, though they get longer by the day.

Edit: And yes, GW1 was a PvP game by default, but I’m pretty sure Anet found out that PvE sells better in MMOs than PvP so they made GW2 PvE first.

RabbitUp.8294:

I honestly hope they rework mace into a self-defensive weapon next xpac.

I use the mace to kite hands on Deimos. So there’s that.

Though this coming week, I’m going to be trying to DPS with Longbow while kiting so mace might still be trashy.

Fashion Mage.3712:

Trident skills in general look and function quite nicely. What a waste.

Both underwater weapons are nice and functional and would be totally fun on land, but sadly must rot underwater. Trident would just have pillar be a symbol and the sink be a knockdown while the spear would have #4 be a line symbol that you hop back when you place it. The weapons would be so fun imo.

I will agree that I have died to condis way to many times while using RF. Sometimes you use it to get back VoR so that you can condi cleanse, so I can see wanting to be able to end it early. Though if anything, I’d almost want it changed to how it was in the Beta weekends. 2 second cast with an 8 second invuln afterwards that you could do anything during (yes I know this was totally OP, but it was fun).

I agree with the idea that all the offhand have a skill that is lacking. The shield is passable for the time being and doesn’t really need to be changed before the others. It has good support and when combined with certain traits, it becomes pretty good at what it does. I think the shield’s biggest problem isn’t so much the skills but where the trait for the shield is located. Being against Communal Defenses and Strength in Numbers (especially SiN), is tough for a trait that only affects shield CDs and give you some toughness.

Now concerning the other two offhands and their skills, they are pretty terrible. Torch has the problem that one skill is pretty useless and the only reason Torch gets ran at all is because the other skills is so loaded that it actually is usable. Torch 4 does have the problem that it likes to make you role play as a Storm Trooper. It is especially bad because when your opponent stands still and you’re moving it still likes to miss gloriously. Than there is the times when you’re in melee with your target and it will still go flying off to nowhere. I think this is because the coding is done for it in such a way in order to get that sweet looking projectile (unless you have a Legendary Torch, than eat candelabra mobs!) and it is not actually coded as a real projectile. This also causes the problems of it falling through floors, not crossing gaps, hitting the tiniest of rocks and so on.

Now onto the terrible skill of Torch, Cleansing Flame. This skill tries to do so many things horribly. First, it does terrible damage. It is a DPS loss over auto attacking and while that is fine, otherwise you get into just spamming every skill off cooldown, the other factors of this skill does not make up for it. The second problem is when you use it to cleanse there are the following problems: if you have auto target on, you will turn away from allies to deal damage instead of cleansing, next the cone seems super small that the cleanse probably misses anyhow.

This skill needs to probably be remade from the ground up and be closer to a single burst Purging Flames than anything. Keeping the blue fire breath is fine as well but there needs to be multiple fixes, namely quicker speed, slightly larger cone, and either a self cleanse on top or burning. My favorite idea for this skill is to make it be a true cleanse and burn condis off allies (including yourself) and removing boons from enemies (or corrupt them into burns only). Make it only tick 3 times, but give it those properties and it’d be fine (consolidate the damage into 3 bigger ticks with 3 cleanses/strips).

Onto the Focus, I really can’t remember the last time I actually put on a Focus (and I love anomaly). Probably the last time was before the Greatsword buff and using it to open on Gorse for the quick burst of damage, than rocking Scepter/Torch for the rest of the fight. Focus’s #5 skill is in a fine spot, provides 3 blocks and also pulls double duty in being able to be used as a burst. Though since I haven’t used the weapon in some time, I can’t recall the CD and if it seems a tad long (used to be 45 seconds, don’t know if that was reduced or not).

Focus 4, Ray of Judgment, Jesus Beam, whatever, doesn’t live up to any expectation. It seems to take forever to cast, removes very few conditions, is slow as molasses, completely unreliable in a fight over 1 target and yourself, and is just purely weak sauce. When you see the Jesus Beam from GW1, it was something to behold. The first time you saw it, you probably died horribly to it because no one expected those Afflicted Monks to actually have smiting prayers instead of being healers. That beam came down, did insane damage that was not reduced by armor, and made you burn as well. After a while, people make groups that used monks with some points in smiting prayers just to bring righteous judgment onto the unbelievers. Fast forward to GW2, and it seems Guardians threw out everything that was great with Monks, they decided Reversal of Fortune was trash, Bonds were kittenty, healing was for chumps, and the Jesus Beam needed to tickle foes instead of destroying them.

I love your idea of actually making RoJ like in GW1. It could also have the same graphic, in it’s outdated over 10 year old self, and I’d be happy. That skill looked awesome, and had the power to back looking awesome.

Panda.1967:

Funny how many of the people claiming to love meters and/or claiming they dont add to exclusions, have actually posted reasons why they have added to exclusions and reduced build versatility.

Meters have increased build variety. In raids, it was Elementalist only for DPS for the longest time. Yes changes to builds happened but since the DPS golem read out Ele having the top damage, everyone only ever wanted Ele. Since DPS meters, it was shown that a decently played cranger would out DPS a same skilled Ele the vast majority of the time. Other classes were also shown that they pulled great DPS in live scenarios for not much effort. On the flip side, it was also shown that the vast majority of Elementalists were terrible and only pulling ~10k.

The skill level has also increased greatly I have found within raids. My static itself went from having problems since a balance patch (I forget which one exactly) to being able to clear everything easily because we were able to find weak areas and fix them. Our PS warrior was only pulling 10k so we had him swap to Thief and someone else jump on PS. The new person was able to pull 16k+ while he was able to pull 22k on thief. This allowed our group DPS to increase and not have to randomly kick people/shuffle stuff around in order to fix problems we were having.

Now if you think I’m an elitest for playing meta and running a DPS meter, I will let you know I play what is considered to be the weakest class in raids: Guardian. My group is fine with me playing it because I constantly place within the other DPS and also beat others are quite a few fights. Before meters, it would have been hard to see if Guardian was worth bringing compared to an Elementalist because there would be no fight data to support it. There would only be golem data/spreadsheets that said Guardian was bad.

I also in fractals use a burn Guardian build that pulls ~18k with no outside help (keeps 25 might up on itself), while healing others with RtL, Signet of Courage, and being able to cleanse 8 conditions on others. The build is so not meta that it works great in PUGs because it expects there to be no PS, chrono, or druid. While running BGDM (I can only see my own DPS and others with it), I keep trying to improve my own DPS but I get discouraged when I see that the percentage of boss health I do by the end of the fight is 40%+. That means that not only did I do most of the damage, I also healed everyone, cleansed them all, probably projectile blocked with shield, and blocked 1 shot attacks with Aegis. When that is the case it makes me really wonder why I broke my back for that group. I never kick others for being that bad, T4 are whatever, but I do kick when people lie about what they know.

An example of a kick is when the LFG says “100cm, be exp” and we get to the 2nd boss and they do not:
1. Mark where they are going at 66/33%.
2. If they do mark, they run off to a totally different location.
3. Even after wiping 2-3 times and the rest of the group telling them where to go, they do not make the changes needed to fix it.

This will get someone kicked every time, even if they pulled super awesome 100k DPS.

Tom.6478:

While not as extreme leather, wasn’t there a similar problem with silk and other cloths a couple of years ago.

How did that situation get turned around?

I could be wrong , but I don’t remember anything special being done. Market demand and supply just slowly evened out.

Most cloths are dirt cheap compared to that time.

I’m fairly certain that silk became cheap (gossamer has been dirt cheap since ascended has been added to the game) not because they touched silk, but because of how they treated leather. Before the main cost of Ascended armor was getting silk because it was used in every time of armor. Since they added on needing a ton of leather (why a Damask patch requires more leather than damask, who knows), leather has become the limiting factor and therefore everyone has more cloth than leather so cloth became cheap.

If Anet touched the recipes and removed leather from patches, you’d probably notice cloth rise in price because it will become the limiting factor again.

Linsey, it is an awesome list you have there. It sucks that you had to repeat steps 7-11, but the player base will love you for it.

Linken.6345:

its an incentive for low pop servers to even play man.

I’d say it’s more of an incentive to not let your server know you are outmanned on a map and to stay quiet about it. If your low pop server ever gets to normally population you lose extra rewards. Going from losing but outmanned (6) to winning but even (3), you end up losing 3 pips per tick no matter what your rank is.

This needs to get fixed by having outmanned only be 1 pip and loyalty be more. If loyalty gave more pips it would really force people to want to show up to WvW and keep participating every week, unlike now where you could just load in, check for outmanned, and if nothing is leave. There is no reason to waste time with loyalty with outmanned being so much.

I totally agree with this idea. The fact that I got outmanned once this week and it was the most amazing thing ever is completely wrong. When you only get 1-3 pips per 5 minutes and than outmanned more than doubles it, it makes you want to hunt down terrible maps and do nothing about it (call out in team to help the outmanned map is a terrible idea) is completely backwards. Now getting rewarded for helping out each week and wanting to keep helping would be better.

As much as I hate it, you could just join the group anyhow. I have never seen anyone ever check titles to make sure everyone has it (though could be because I show Demon’s Demise which is harder so they don’t ask). If you do decide to lie and join a group, try to at least know the fights because it is extremely obvious when someone doesn’t and that is an instant kick, even with the title.

Raid wise, as everyone has said, Scepter/Torch + Greatsword. For out in the world, every weapon on Guardian is useful unlike weapons on other classes. So while leveling I highly suggesting getting used to every weapon and what it can do. You never know when you might come across a problem that is easily solved by using something else.

Now if you want a trait set-up for open world that lets you chew through mobs, you want Permeating Wrath from Virtues (top of the 3rd column), and the scepter trait (zeal, bottom of the 1st column). These basically let you have 25 might all the time while wielding the scepter (so long as you don’t use Virtue of Justice) and will let you melt pretty much everything that crosses your path.

draxynnic.3719:

In the PvE situations, having perma-quickness may actually be better for balance than having lesser quickness uptimes – with perma-quickness, you only need one or two quickness-providing characters to do the job. Without, you’d likely just have people taking additional quickness-providing characters to fill the gap, leaving less room for people to bring professions who don’t provide group quickness.

I can totally agree with this. I could see that if quickness was only provided by Timewarp and Feel my Wrath (pre elite specs), Guardians would be the only viable DPS bringing FmW and enough boon uptime between them to provide 100% quickness. Since the game would be at a point where quickness is a 50% DPS increase and upkeeping it would outweight other classes that did more DPS. Meanwhile sharing the perma upkeep love lets DPS still be any class and you just swap the buffer out.

Healix.5819:

The problem with some break bars is that they’re balanced around the assumption that everyone has the equivalent of a 5s stun, when realistically most have the equivalent of a 1s stun at best. It’d also be a lot more fair for groups if the conditions ticked simultaneously.

I believe most champions start with 600 break bar health and scale an additional 180 per person who joins the fight. This means that if everyone brought a 2s stun with them every break bar everywhere would be broken. Sadly there are not enough Bearbows around anymore to bring the CC we need.

I always found it strange that since the specialization update, Guardian has been a relatively terrible support class. In PvE, the support is non-existent, in sPvP it’s meh, and in WvW it’s passable because of “Stand Your Ground!” and traited VoC. I believe that staff needs to be brought up to speed by the following:
1 – Heals allies when used like Water 1 for ele on staff.
2 – Increased base CD and area targetted, travels to that area and blows up there.
3 – Symbol should heal or cleanse conditions when dropped (like how Longbow burns when it is dropped).
4 – Remove might, make it heal per pulse instead of at the end, and make it give 5 stacks of GotL at the end.
5 – Heals those who pass through it.

Fixing staff would go a long way to healing out support Guardian. Mace still needs some help (quicker symbol and better auto heals imo), though Shield is in a fine spot. The biggest problems with support Guardian is the weapons suck, the utilities have to long of CD (though Anet has been reducing them at a snails pace) and nothing has DPS support.

Pecar.1236:

WvW-One of the best class for zerg/GvG battle

Pretty sure if “Stand Your Ground!” did not exist, Guardian would not be around. It’s great to be held up by one utility.

RabbitUp.8294:

Azoqu.8917:

RabbitUp.8294:

Funny thing is that OP’s suggestion would actually be a mesmer buff.
https://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Well_of_Precognition

That well needs to just get removed from the game. There is no reason why Mesmers should do the Guardian boon better than the Guardian.

Mesmers are better guardians in general

Oh I know and it kittenes me off to no end. Like I know why Mesmers are better (it’s the pet class from GW1 and unique to GW), but when a class was described as being the boon class, it should be the boon class and not some other class. And when a class is giving something unique to them (Aegis), they should also be the best ones at it but Guardian is not. I really don’t understand the point to Guardian in the current game.

RabbitUp.8294:

Funny thing is that OP’s suggestion would actually be a mesmer buff.
https://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Well_of_Precognition

That well needs to just get removed from the game. There is no reason why Mesmers should do the Guardian boon better than the Guardian.

Assic.2746:

Those changes would make Virtue of Justice broken when it comes to potential future elite specs.

It wouldn’t be broken with future elite specs because you just treat it like how PvP treats it. The buff is only for Virtue of Justice and not Spear of Justice, aka the 4s burn is only when you’re not a DH and when you are a DH the passive decreases to 2s burn.

TL:DR – Condi builds are easier to play, and give off a higher reward than Power builds currently and that is the problem.

Daddicus.6128:

Not true. Just try a new thread asking “What’s the best gear stats for <profession>?” You’ll get berserk from at least half the people, even if you specify “don’t tell me about berserker gear”. I know; I’ve done it.

That is more because it is easier to get Berserker gear and is the only real choice if you don’t have HoT.

Now concerning the problem with the condi specs. I personally have a problem because of the following:

1. Condi builds pull more damage with less effort. Crangers pull insane damage even if they screw up their rotation a ton. This is also shown when you look at the new condi ele, you pull amazing damage for a “spam stuff off cool down” build, meanwhile when you play power you get “pull of these 7356 steps to be 10% lower than that Cranger who spammed buttons.”
2. All power builds got a nerf because “seaweed salad was unhealthy.” Sorry Anet, but the shuffle required you to actually be able to do it in addition to your rotations (lots of people couldn’t pull the uptime in order to actually make it the better food), and condi food is even more over stat’d than SwS was. SwS was a max of a 10% buff in damage while pizza is ~13% and requires you to do nothing for it.
3. Power builds require you to be above 90% health in order to pull the most out of them while condi doesn’t have threshold on it.
4. Not all classes have a condi build. Guardians just need like 1 change to have a viable build but Anet refused to do it. Yes I know Firebrand is rumored to be a condi spec, but I should not have to buy/wait for an expansion in order to be brought up to par with other classes.
5. The problem with Zerker meta before was never the fact that it was condi is trash, it was because people wanted to play their healers, buffers, tanks, but the game was designed to be played with active defenses making toughness/vitality/healing power all trash. Yes condi was bad because of how it was built, but Anet shouldn’t have swung the pendulum so hard. The idea is to not punish something for how good it was in the past, but to make it so both are usable.

CptAurellian.9537:

Looks reasonable and when we’re already at EM, that trait needs a big rework, i.e. no ICD and an increased range. Unfortunately, I doubt the devs have the brains to fix it.

EM has always been a dumb trait. Before the game came out I saw it and planned to make a build using sword in order to blind targets and provide a lot of might to the group. Then when the game came out I found out that EM had a 1s CD so it destroyed being able to use #3 to stack lots, and bosses being practically immune to blind destroyed the other part. I got over it and then PS came out and just made a mockery of EM and why it even exists. Then after another year, Rev was made and could stack might, and any other boon, way better than “the boon class”.

Which speaking of Rev, that class shouldn’t even exist and each legend should of just been a mist themed elite spec for different classes. Anet would of only had to make 3 more elites because the current 5 legends could have been given to different classes.

I can, as a player believing in meta builds over garbage, get behind off-meta builds if they are better in the situation. I run an off meta build in fractals because it provides 25 might without the need of an outside stacker. Now once I get a PS warrior in the group I switch the build up because I no longer need to stack might myself so the benefit of this off build disappears.

So many people stick to the meta religiously that they’re doing less than they should because they are all sheep.

If anything I’d expect it to be the other way, damage when running through it but not when CC’d through it. The reasoning for this is the name and flavor of the skill, it is literally a Test of Faith. Kind of hard to test your faith if you can just run through it but when compelled against your will it tests you?

And if they changed it to only do damage when walked through and not CC’d through, I’d totally expect dodges to not work on it because that is the test, damage to get out or stay in and face the Guardian.

SlippyCheeze.5483:

All the concordance of changes tell us is that power was over-performing compared to condition damage over the last while, and this is an effort to move them closer together.

What rock have you been living under since the prior balance patch? Condi has been doing better and then power got nerfed.

*PvE raid perspective. No PvP or WvW consideration in this post.

zoomborg.9462:

Besides the reason u want ps isnt the might stacks. Its the banners.

Banners affect 10 people, so you can most definitly drop one warrior if everyone goes condi and might is provided.

Ze Dos Cavalos.6132:

calm down calm down they are nerfing condi ele already

Arcane Power: The number of stacks this ability applies has been reduced from 5 to 4.
Elemental Surge: The duration of burning this ability applies has been reduced from 5 seconds to 4 seconds.

When you math is out quickly, still does great damage and might still let you drop the 2 PS warriors for 1 condi DPS warrior and 1 other DPS.