Mikeskies.1536:

Black Box.9312:

Mikeskies.1536:

Random.4691:

There is more then enough content (if they get their crap together and release it .. cough raids cough) to keep everyone busy without time gating the Elites. We have Raids, Guild Halls, New Maps (for all modes), Fractals, Legendaries, Adventures, Events, Masteries, and I’m sure I’ve missed a few. I don’t see how time gating the Elites is productive, how does it affect anyone if you do it as a Necro or a Reaper for example. If they wanted to do something for elites they should have done a quest line of some sort.

The bottom line is, it hurts nothing to have elites playable, the rest of the content is still the same regardless of which class/spec you are using. There is simply no need and all this has done is divide the community and ticked off a lot of players. This is suppose to be an exciting time for GW2 and instead they have managed to turn it into a witch hunt.

Your character is alive. In GW2, leveling up and completing hero challenges unlocked progression for your character. For elite specialization, it should be self-evident that gaining access to them requires your character to complete challenges to achieve that. Your character will become elite through character growth, i.e. playing the game. How elite specializations are unlocked should be looked at as exciting to complete challenges to unlock the elite inside your character, not an inconvenience.

Sorry, but I don’t RP. My character is not alive; he is a computer-generated model in a video game. Sorry if it breaks your immersion, but I’d rather have access to my elite spec without having to specifically grind HoT hero challenges.

It is nothing to do with RP/immersion. That is how GW2 is designed. You participate in events and play through your personal story. Your character is part of a living world. Specializations have always required skill points/hero points, e.g. playing the game. You had to play GW2 for your character to reach level 80, so why should it differ now in an expansion?

Because my characters are already at level 80, which is still the maximum level, and I would kinda rather not have the efforts that I made completing the overworld challenges for the base game go almost entirely to waste. It would be one thing if unlocking the elite spec was simply a natural progression that happened just through playing the game, but instead we have to specifically rush through hero challenges in the jungle to get what we want. This makes it absolutely nothing like what players go through by simply leveling their character from 1 to 80.

Kal Spiro.9745:

Agemnon.4608:

Farming, time, and effort aren’t the problem, ludicrous amounts of it are.

I see this phrase popping up over and over. Could someone define for me very specifically what constitutes ludicrous? Cause I’ve been reading the same things you have and I have not seen anything that I could define as ludicrous. Some of this will take a fair amount of time, which is GOOD, because more time spent unlocking things means more time with the content, and not burning through it all in a week and then wondering why there isn’t more to do.

Even with that, I’m pretty certain some people will accomplish 100% Elites on day one. They may not accomplish anything else, but they’ll have that.

The only people this seems to hurt are the people with way too many characters, of which they need all to have elites, for some reason. I’ve got 13 characters, about, one doesn’t exist yet, but will in a couple days. Of those, though, I only plan on getting elites for 4, one of which can definitely wait until much later to go through the process.

If for some reason I absolutely needed all 13 characters to be elites, that would be a problem, but that would still only be a problem for me for having such an unruly number of characters. It’s not ANet’s fault nor problem. If it takes x amount of time to get the thing, then it should absolutely take x times the number of characters you want to up to elites in order to do that. That’s completely reasonable.

Gating elite specs does not add value to the content. The new content was going to be present either way, and the people who wanted to do it were going to do it regardless. The only thing this has accomplished is that players now feel pressured to complete the content faster without getting to play through it with the elite spec that they want in the first place.

This does not add time and value to content that was going to be played regardless.

Mikeskies.1536:

Random.4691:

There is more then enough content (if they get their crap together and release it .. cough raids cough) to keep everyone busy without time gating the Elites. We have Raids, Guild Halls, New Maps (for all modes), Fractals, Legendaries, Adventures, Events, Masteries, and I’m sure I’ve missed a few. I don’t see how time gating the Elites is productive, how does it affect anyone if you do it as a Necro or a Reaper for example. If they wanted to do something for elites they should have done a quest line of some sort.

The bottom line is, it hurts nothing to have elites playable, the rest of the content is still the same regardless of which class/spec you are using. There is simply no need and all this has done is divide the community and ticked off a lot of players. This is suppose to be an exciting time for GW2 and instead they have managed to turn it into a witch hunt.

Your character is alive. In GW2, leveling up and completing hero challenges unlocked progression for your character. For elite specialization, it should be self-evident that gaining access to them requires your character to complete challenges to achieve that. Your character will become elite through character growth, i.e. playing the game. How elite specializations are unlocked should be looked at as exciting to complete challenges to unlock the elite inside your character, not an inconvenience.

Sorry, but I don’t RP. My character is not alive; he is a computer-generated model in a video game. Sorry if it breaks your immersion, but I’d rather have access to my elite spec without having to specifically grind HoT hero challenges.

InB4 thread derail.

But anyway, regarding the topic, I certainly wouldn’t mind having armor sets better tailored to fit charr models without being warped and cluttered with massive clipping issues. If having “sexy” charr armor fits within the greater scheme of it, then sure, I’m all for it.

I’d rather just continue to pretend that nothing related to the Dragonhunter even exists.

Scar.1793:

Black Box.9312:

Zoltreez.6435:

Sword off hand = Guardian shield before buff. no one takes it because all the other off hand offers more and better stuff.

lol, it’s nowhere near as bad as Guardian shield was. People seem to be forgetting that, unlike shield, you can use OH sword with any build, and it does not require the use of Herald, which will be competing with future e-specs. The only problem it really has is that the pull should be a teleport from 600 range, which then pulls the target as you teleport back to your original position.

Even with that change it would be useless : you can’t pull many ennemies in PvE, especially with raids now even though I haven’t tried them but obviously some mobs will be immune

Not everything is balanced exclusively around PvE. In PvP, it would make for an excellent on-demand interrupt, or a way to take someone off of a point, or a way to pick them out of a crowd to be brought to melee range. Of those three things, axe can only act as an interrupt, and even that has a short delay that makes it more difficult to use.

Yes, because I’m sure everyone wants to play with 2/3 of a build at level 80 through content that’s supposedly more difficult than anything we’ve had previously.

PopeUrban.2578:

Black Box.9312:

PopeUrban.2578:

The people complaining about this are literally complaining that character progression systems scale linearly relative to the number of characters you want to progress.

Next you’ll be asking for waypoints to be account unlocks.

Even with your assumption that everyone is only worried about having to grind alts aside (Protip: That’s not the only reason people are unhappy about this), many people have already progressed their characters. Not everyone enjoys being told that the work that they did amounts to nothing.

People who want more “progression” can feel free to make a new character and start over. The rest of us would just like to be able to complete the new content with the elite spec of our choice fully fleshed out from the start. I’m not very satisfied with the thought of finally fully unlocking the Herald, only to realize that after rushing through the content and not having any fun that there’s none of it left to complete with my fancy new e-spec.

Elite specs were, from the very first reveal always advertised as anet’s new method of ongoing character progression

Not a thing they hand you as soon as it hits live, but progression That is used as the way to add new character build options.

The breakup of skill points and miyani currency was done specifically for this reason, just like the specialization system was done specifically for this reason. making hero points a limited commodity and converting all excess skill points from the old system was also done specifically for this reason. The whole game was redesigned around this progression system months ago, alongside very detailed blog posts as to why.

They said this a whole lot during the trait update, the reveal of elite specs as a system, and continually during all the “hoT is really about designing expandable systems we will continue to use in the future.”

Again, they specifically stated progression is a thing they want to be ongoing but that they want to do it without a vertical gear treadmill

What part of any of the information we’ve had over the past year gave you the idea that elite specs weren’t designed from the ground up as a progression system?

It’s literally the GW2 version of adding new skill trainers and secondary class options. They’re major feature updates, intended to give characters additional horizontal avenues of progression beyond the previous limitations.

I really, for the life of me, don’t understand what people are so up in arms about.

It’s almost as if you expected to be at the end of expansion character progression the day the expansion released. That was never advertised or even implied. How everyone got it in their heads in the first place that they’d be running around in full on elite specs outside of sPvP is beyond me. It’s not how the game has ever worked, or has even ever been advertised as an intent

They intend that you complete new content to access new character build options

And when the next elite spec is released, you can bet it will come alongside new PvE maps and new WvW angry letters corresponding to those maps. It is literally half of the content of all open world maps moving forward by design because it was the only part of world completion that was meaningful aside from getting achievements in the first place

The other half of the system is masteries, and masteries are the account end of that progression system. This is the character end. The game is full of complimentary systems like these, generally limiting things useful across all characters as account systems (bank tabs, crafting, etc.) so that you don’t end up doing the same unlocks on wildly different characters, and things useful only on a given character (bag space, profession skill unlocks, gear) as character systems. In general the account unlocks help facilitate faster progress through character systems. The relationship of masteries to elite specs is no different.

Source? As far as I’ve read into, masteries were the only source of “progression” that we’d be getting in HoT. If they had said anything about elite specs requiring a grind that far exceeds anything possible in the base game, then people would have voiced their outcry much sooner and would not have bothered themselves to rigorously complete the map on as many characters as they possibly can for the exact reason of avoiding the extra grind now so that they can enjoy the new content the way that they want to.

Someone else in this thread brought up a great point regarding the artificial inflation of hero points as well: What happens when the next expansion and round of elite specs is released? Will each elite spec cost 4,000 hero points, with each challenge in the new zones being worth 100 points each? That’s a great way to ensure that nobody will ever be ahead of the curve, but it’s also a great way to ensure that nobody will care about any previous content once new stuff is released. It really ends up with an effect no different than if straight-up vertical progression were implemented in this game. The only difference is that instead of inferior skills with lower damage numbers, we have inferior content with devalued progression points that nobody will ever want to touch again because the new stuff has literally 10 times more of a reward for what will likely amount to roughly the same amount of effort.

Anet is setting a horrendous precedent with this. People who wanted to grind their way through HoT for the new elite specs could have freely done so by their own will. With the way they’re going about it now, however, we’re basically being told that any of our previous work amounts to nothing, and that there’s no reason to ever touch the base game content beyond the bare minimum. Why would you ever want to do map completion anymore, when you can achieve better results with 10% of the time and effort required in the jungle?

This is a horrendous design choice, and is a textbook example of exactly what not to do when designing an expansion for a game. People are going to rush through the new challenges while avoiding anything else, leaving any sort of extra group content to languish. Launch is now going to be an absolute mess, because they’ve literally devalued anything that isn’t a jungle challenge by a factor of 10.

The one to Rule.2593:

Black Box.9312:

The one to Rule.2593:

I just don’t get people. first it was " we need something to do! living world sucks!" Now it’s “OMG I HAVE TO DO THINGS??”

This is a dumb point, because people were planning on doing the content anyway.

This was a dumb post, because I was planning on replying anyway. See how useless both of our comments were now?

No, because what you’ve just said is completely irrelevant and nonsensical.

Now instead of cruising through the new content at a nice, easy pace to get the most for my money, I’m going to have to speedrun through it just so I can play the elite spec I want to play as quickly as possible. The best part? Once I finally get it, I’ll already be burnt out on the new content, and I won’t want to bother playing with my brand new elite spec that acted as the entire incentive to complete the content in the first place.

But hey, at least you guys get your progression, right?

The one to Rule.2593:

I just don’t get people. first it was " we need something to do! living world sucks!" Now it’s “OMG I HAVE TO DO THINGS??”

This is a dumb point, because people were planning on doing the content anyway.

PopeUrban.2578:

The people complaining about this are literally complaining that character progression systems scale linearly relative to the number of characters you want to progress.

Next you’ll be asking for waypoints to be account unlocks.

Even with your assumption that everyone is only worried about having to grind alts aside (Protip: That’s not the only reason people are unhappy about this), many people have already progressed their characters. Not everyone enjoys being told that the work that they did amounts to nothing.

People who want more “progression” can feel free to make a new character and start over. The rest of us would just like to be able to complete the new content with the elite spec of our choice fully fleshed out from the start. I’m not very satisfied with the thought of finally fully unlocking the Herald, only to realize that after rushing through the content and not having any fun that there’s none of it left to complete with my fancy new e-spec.

I seriously don’t understand the rationale behind this. It’s almost like you guys want people to rush through the content as quickly as they can just to unlock the build they want, and then complain about not having anything to do with the new build because all of the content is already done by the time they got to use it.

This just screams poor design choice to me. The people who would want to grind their way up could just do so voluntarily, and the rest of us could actually enjoy ALL of the content at a pace and sequence of our choice.

Furthermore, the shifting of weight so heavily in favor of Maguuma challenges over that of the base game completely devalues everything we currently have. Why would anyone want to bother playing vanilla map content anymore when they can just boost to 80 and then unlock everything they need much more efficiently by going to the jungle?

Zoltreez.6435:

Sword off hand = Guardian shield before buff. no one takes it because all the other off hand offers more and better stuff.

lol, it’s nowhere near as bad as Guardian shield was. People seem to be forgetting that, unlike shield, you can use OH sword with any build, and it does not require the use of Herald, which will be competing with future e-specs. The only problem it really has is that the pull should be a teleport from 600 range, which then pulls the target as you teleport back to your original position.

1,757 healing power in a PvE build. That’s a good one.

Cat Has Ducks.1982:

TheLastNobody.8319:

Ehhhh, sounding like you guys are having the same problems as us necromancers….so from what I’m getting at revenant and Druid are pretty much pushing you guys out?

They are either giving part of what makes us good to them or making what we offer seem less important.

So many nonreflectable crap being added to raids and new content it’s annoying. As well as unblockable attacks. But the biggest problem is with so much little damage constantly being thrown around in raids, it is becoming much harder to get reliable blocks on the hard hitting attacks.

Oh and while they were at it, they nerfed our 4 second quickness ELITE!!!!

I think that that is the single most annoying thing that Anet is doing with PvE. Because of the ridiculous nature of reflect scaling, they’ve decided to make every PvE projectile completely unblockable instead of just adjusting reflect damage.

It makes Guardians near useless in a fight.

Arewn.2368:

The thing is, people can still have worthwhile perspectives and ideas even if they haven’t tried something themselves, or have had little experience with it. You can understand the rules of baseball and know what a good play is even if you’ve never touched a baseball bat in your life.
There’s no need to be dismissive like that. If you take issue with the point someone made, address that point. Don’t ignoring it and attack them instead.

Wow. I wish you had been here a week ago, when I was getting chewed the kitten out.

Garimeth.8725:

Let me re-phrase the convo…

I agree there doesn’t seem to be anything we will be BEST at, my question is are we TERRIBLE at everything. Only way I will switch mains is if we SUCK, simply not being the best is not that important to me if I enjoy my character.

You’ll still very much be able to play a Guardian in PvE. It won’t be terrible at everything, but you’ll just end up being an aegis bot, for the most part.

I can see Guardians being valuable for aegis and allied stability, but Guardians will definitely be less valuable in PvE than they’ve been. Especially if new mob mechanics will rely on mobile combat. We’ve always been bottom of the barrel at damage/support on the go.

Nickthemoonwolf.1485:

Sarif.1827:

Nickthemoonwolf.1485:

Absolutely but what I was saying is that its going to be a single hit, where the projectile hit two times, one outgoing and one coming back in.

People are asking if the loss of this double hit feature will cause a loss of DPS potential, or if the new replacement takes that into consideration.

AH! Ok, I get you now.

While it might suck, I don’t see us getting the added DPS… I’d hate to say it, but I rather have slightly less dps then an attack that will be a bigger hindrance in the long run.

Still, some feedback from Roy could clear this up easily!

I think feedback is really all people want at this point. I’ll be 100% honest, the guardian forums really do need some dev feedback. Though I dont blame them because people will just complain about the feedback instead. Its the new necro/ranger QQ.

It got that way because of the neglect. You’re confusing the cause and effect, here.

The staff autoattack is probably the one thing that I wish was different on charr. I like the asura one a lot, but I like most of the other animations better on charr. :c

And I agree with the above post about changing the idle animation. I don’t really see why it can’t just be the regular staff one. Hammer idle just looks wrong with a staff.

Asmodal.6489:

Black Box.9312:

I’m toxic? Have you been reading at all? I’ve simply given my opinion, and only received hostility for it. Anything further from me was just for my own defense.

As for preordering HoT, even with my negative opinion of game preordering in general aside, why would I want to do that if I haven’t been actively playing GW2 for months now? I’ve played the occasional PvP match, but not much else. And I plan to keep my money until I know for certain whether or not HoT is something I want to invest on.

sigh
my neck hurts from shaking in disbelief

Feel free to send me $50 via PayPal then.

Nickthemoonwolf.1485:

The one to Rule.2593:

Yet guardians still waiting for the same auto attack fix…..and spirit weapons fix…

I mean it being a projectile is bad but did guardian AA have the same uh… problems that revs AA did? I dont remember ever having problems with terrain messing with my guardian using sword.

Edit: I am actually asking by the way. I mainly used hammer on guardian but I did use sword a lot too.

It’s pretty bad. It doesn’t cleave, and any sort of terrain disparity or sometimes even just strafing movement can throw it off. I didn’t get to try the Revenant’s sword firsthand, but I know that part of the reason why it’s so bad on Guardian is because it’s an attack that’s treated like a projectile, but it doesn’t actually throw a projectile. So it’s kind of baffling that it has projectile properties to begin with.

Asmodal.6489:

Jaxom.7310:

Nike.2631:

…and now for something completely different…

SUPERIOR RUNES OF THE DRAGONHUNTER

(1) +25 Power
(2) +10% cripple duration
(3) +50 Power
(4) 25% chance when struck to inflict cripple for 5 seconds. (Cooldown: 20 seconds)
(5) +100 Power
(6) +15% cripple duration, +25% move speed

((suggestion for new profession-complimentary runes for HoT))

(6) +7% dmg to crippled foes

w/ or w/o speed and i’d be a fan, maybe 5% dmg + speed

I would rather have vitality on it.

http://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Superior_Rune_of_Speed

Roman God of War.6953:

Black Box.9312:

Asmodal.6489:

Black Box.9312:

I don’t need to drop $50 to playtest the DH because I have more than enough hours on my Guardians to know that this is not at all what the class needs to remain competitive.

rofl
are you serious?? you are one the most vocal vocies against the DH and you have zero playtime on the elite spec?

You have literally no experience how the bow behaves, how the damage feels, what numbers you can actually produce, how traits connect and what not and you are dissing the elite spec and everyone who has even the slightest love for the spec.

you act like a know it all and yet you know nothing from first hand experience.

incredible. I do not care how much experience you have on the core class.
Thats like saying “I know how chinese food tastes. it sucks! I havnt had it yet but I am very well experienced at eating.”

Please put an “I assume…” infront of you posts from now on. jeezus.

I know enough about the game and the base class to not need to play it. I’ve seen videos and talked to guildies that have tried it. That’s given me more than enough information to know that it’s not worth my time. It doesn’t take a rocket scientist to look at a trait list and see the potential interactions with other traits, which, in the case of the DH in relation to the base class, is very little.

So quite frankly, I don’t care what you feel the need to tell me. If you want to make things personal, fine, that’s your call. But I guarantee it won’t end well.

Man you are toxic. Relax, and be constructive and TRY to see someones opinion from their POV and not yours. your supposed to be hear to socialize, be constructive, and rarely come up with something new to help out the professional developers work.

All of your replies are so rude, AND if your this invested in gw2, you really should consider getting HoT back then even if it was just for the beta access…You are enjoying the tireless work of a company, between LS1 LS2, BL skins, fractals, and many more updates since launch.

You seem to have good points, but it is hard to listen to someone so volatile and toxic.

Cheers

I’m toxic? Have you been reading at all? I’ve simply given my opinion, and only received hostility for it. Anything further from me was just for my own defense.

As for preordering HoT, even with my negative opinion of game preordering in general aside, why would I want to do that if I haven’t been actively playing GW2 for months now? I’ve played the occasional PvP match, but not much else. And I plan to keep my money until I know for certain whether or not HoT is something I want to invest on.

Blackdeath.2607:

Ghotistyx.6942
Light aura should be an on hit effect granted from Radiant Retaliation (in addition to its current effects), while Signet use should have a different bonus.

Your so right there it isn’t funny, adding light aura as a on hit effect to radiant retaliation is a fantastic idea, tbh i doubt if any1 actually uses radiant retaliation atm cos it needs 1k condi for it to be a gain over power.

You know you can click the arrow in the bottom right corner of someone’s post to quote it, right?

I get that you’re going for humor, but I’m still not convinced. The vast majority of your enemies had very little positional awareness, you were saved by rallies more than once, and the engineer at the end straight up beat you. The build you were using also has very little sustain and condi clear, which is not good for a Guardian.

The difference is that with the current functionality, even skillful play ends up falling short because there is downtime on your entire build. You could be the best player in the room, and still be completely vulnerable when your spirit weapons are down even though you were skilled enough to prevent them from dying while they were up.

You’re talking two entirely different situations. If you re-summoned a spirit weapon immediately after it died only to allow it to die again, then that would be on you anyway.

Solori.6025:

Black Box.9312:

If you’re in WvW as a Herald and not stacking fury and swiftness while out of combat, then I’m not sure what to tell ya. This really shouldn’t be a problem.

Also, the only one of those examples that can be used on an already stealthed enemy is the Sneak Gyro, which (unless I’m out of the loop on recent changes) is visible itself even when the stealth function is active.

Not sure where Fury and Swiftness come in to fit this scenario, minus the fact that starting out in herald to fight 70% of stealth builds is a really really bad idea.

Most initiations by a thief start with basilisk venom +( skill)

You are going to use that stun break on Gaze-
Thief continues to apply pressure and either holds out on the duration of the revealed OR ports and stealths and comes back.

It could be argued that you could heal and save the stun break-
But now you have effectively used one of the best "O SH*** " buttons the class has for an initiation.

A thing the thief can repeat.

So even with the Facet of Darkness on Pre-fight, It’s use is entirely situational and probably better mid fight.

With that in mind.
It’s also probably better to start Or initiate another class in Shiro-
Being that’s the stance that applies the most pressure, ( and has more ways to escape or evade ) with more ways to screw up a thief initiation.

Let’s say you fight a mes-

Starting out in herald get’s you kited
“You can use sword 3 to put you in range AND do damage”

Assuming that the mes OR thief hasn’t stunned you yet
That you haven’t taken significant damage from ranged attacks
AND that they haven’t forced you to use a stun break

You still have the very high possibility of having UA dodged-invulned- OR stealthed.

The important thing to remember also is that the Reveal is tied to one of the only stun breaks on the Herald.

You can force the use of this stun break early on OR force the revenant to use it’s best heal.

Either case is a win/win IF you know what you’re looking for.

The point I was making was that there really shouldn’t be an activation time, since the reveal is on the active portion of the facet that grants fury, and anyone worth their salt would be stacking fury and swiftness as much as they can while out of combat in WvW anyway for the extra mobility and hefty pool of fury to work from when initiating combat.

You are over-analyzing this to a ridiculous extent.

Saiyan.1704:

Fashion Mage.3712:

Saiyan.1704:

You’re miss informed. We designated the Guardian as the healer class because there was no other class around to fulfill that role. No one, not the Devs or Lore, said Guardian was the healing class. So yes, Guardian was never meant to be the healer class.

Yes, building a guardian based on damage mitigation is one of the many ways to build them, but not seeing the obvious connection to healing that they have is just simple delusion.
I’d go on and on about all the supportive healing that guardians have, but BlackBox was already courteous enough to list most of it, although you shrugged it off as him being “misinformed*”. Guardians also used to have the best healing ability in the game until it was more or less stolen by druids.
As for the lore, I think the rather large connection that guardians have to monks really says enough.

It’s fine if you really love the kind of guardian that you’re playing right now, but your persistent and delusional insistence that guardians were never meant to be able to be built as healers is extremely obnoxious and you should really stop.

I’m not being obnoxious as if i’m flaunting my ego around. This is about the very representation of what Guardian was as a class before patch; what the certain people portraited the Guardian as being, to the current evolution to what the Guard truly is.

I’m not in any illusion that our biggest group healing aspect, Tomb of Courage, was removed so the Druid would appear as the game’s group healer class. It definitely wasn’t all about the asthetics of Tombs themselve. I could look at other class mechanics and say “oh, it doesn’t fit” or “it needed a change”. They wouldn’t have touched Tombs at all if it wasn’t for the Druid spec. That’s the Devs covering for what their intentions really were.

My point is, yes, Guardian was played as the Healing class because it was a group healing class. But that isn’t the core lore – foundation – of the Guardian himself.

He is a soldier who damages first, protects second and heals third.

Druid is a healer first, CC second and everything else falls under third.

I never said that Guardian was the healer. I said that Guardian is a healer. Big difference.

This game was built on the premise that roles would not be class-restricted. Yet here we are with a perfect example to counter it. If I need a healer, why would I ever want to take a Guardian when I could just take a Druid instead? What good would bringing Sanctuary be if a Ventari Revenant can do virtually the same thing on a much greater scale with much, much less downtime?

It’s pretty evident that we were given a set of healing skills and traits with the idea in mind that a player could create a healing-focused build for a Guardian. This does not imply any sort of exclusivity. The problem with it no longer being exclusive only comes from the fact that these skills are now all rendered near pointless, because there’s no reason to even have so many allied healing skills on a Guardian when you can just bring someone else that will inevitably be better when it comes to providing allied heals.

So why do we even have these skills anymore if they’re the least effective option? If Anet truly wants the Guardian to be objectively inferior at allied healing, then that’s one thing. But if that really is the case, then they need to replace skills and traits meant for a healing build with other things that will help push the Guardian closer towards what it IS supposed to be.

If you’re in WvW as a Herald and not stacking fury and swiftness while out of combat, then I’m not sure what to tell ya. This really shouldn’t be a problem.

Also, the only one of those examples that can be used on an already stealthed enemy is the Sneak Gyro, which (unless I’m out of the loop on recent changes) is visible itself even when the stealth function is active.

Black Box.

I am absolutely committed to changing my main.

On another note, I hope you all have created placeholders, or you’re going to be pretty disappointed come Oct. 23rd.

The one to Rule.2593:

seems like all guards are switching lol

Not all, obviously, but a lot, because there are a lot of people unsatisfied with the treatment (or lack thereof) that the class has been receiving. Combine that with the Dragonhunter not really resonating with a good portion of the Guardian community, and you have a host of people who are looking for something new.

And I, at least, think that the Revenant is exactly the kind of thing I’ve been looking for in this game.

The one to Rule.2593:

meh, guardian has been a sinking ship for awhile and I for one won’t be on it when it finally goes under, changing to rev main

Pretty much this. OP might be a bit dramatic about it, but the point is pretty clearly evident. Anet has effectively killed my interest in the Guardian, and this is really just another example to further the point.

Ghotistyx.6942:

Guardian is in a good place. There are lots of build options and things to explore. Our class hasn’t stagnated, and still has a place in any game mode. Players refusing to develop the tools of their class is not the fault of the designers.

You’re really just plain 100% wrong on this. The class has absolutely stagnated. Want proof? Take a look at the Druid and Ventari Revenant. Take note of the fact that despite how many of our skills and traits being related to allied healing in some way, that these are being built from the ground up to be better healers than the Guardian ever was. Look at the fact that they’re abandoning healing power entirely in favor of just boosting allied heals by a percentage value.

Don’t say that Guardian wasn’t meant to be a healer, either. It was definitely meant to be a healer to at least some extent. The problem has always been that our allied heals are still balanced around a launch-era meta that Anet has now proven no longer exists. They’re not afraid to allow for actual scaling and have low cooldowns on allied heals anymore. And yet, here we are 3 years later, with skills like these:

-Virtue of Resolve: 1,625 heal, 50s cooldown, 32.5 HP/s
-Orb of Light (Detonated): 271 (to allies it passes through) + 788 (1,059) heal, 12s cooldown, 65.67/88.25 HP/s
-Empower: 1,500 heal, 20s cooldown, 75 HP/s
-Shield of Absorption (Detonated): 1,300 heal, 24s cooldown, 54.17 HP/s
-Merciful Intervention: 1,960 heal, 50s cooldown, 39.2 HP/s
-Sanctuary: 266 * 6 (1,596) heal, 120s cooldown, 13.3 HP/s
-Signet of Courage: 808 heal, 10s interval, 80.8 HP/s

None of these even bump above 2k unless you invest heavily into healing power, and even then you’re hard pressed to get them past 3k. Meanwhile, the HP/s ratio on every single one is under 100, making them less worthwhile for raw sustain than regen alone.

As for the actual thread topic, the change to gyros is really just another nail in the coffin for me. I loved my Guardians, but I really just don’t see myself caring about the class anymore.

Pyriel.4370:

So we get a spear pull (great) and a trait buff that boosts damage at range.

That is basically representative of why Dragonhunter isn’t going to work well once balanced after the launch shiney.

Anet needs to make up it’s mind as currently the problems are blatantly as follows;

- Traps in general, we cannot even throw them so we need to get in close to use them anyway.
– Virtue 2 is a leap into allies, healing them (likely melee) but you want to be ranged for the dps trait buff.
– Virtue 1 will pull enemies close but the longbow needs to be at range for dps buff.
– Shouts range is 600 but 13% dmg buff is when beyond 600 range.

The synergy is terrible a Dragonhunter can not be at peak at any time as a Guardian as it will be constantly be competing with either close or far range. Traps should be exchanged for chants (shouts with a cast time and/or pulsating effect?) with at least 900 range.

This is really what I feel. Even at its best, the Dragonhunter looks like it’s suffering from an identity crisis. Does it want to be melee, or does it want to be ranged? There’s no way to differentiate between the tools you’re given enough to select one or the other, and there isn’t enough that is universal enough to complement both.

Vennyhedgie.5369:

He also has talked to friends who don’t agree with him but he never mentions that part :p

Yeah, all 1 of them. x_x

And thanks for the defense I guess, guys? But I dunno if I really need it. I think I’m just being misrepresented more than anything else. I’ve never said that absolutely everything about DH is worse than anything and literally hitler.

I like the bow, at least, and have always seen potential in it (other than when it was bugged), even though some things like Deflecting Shot and Hunter’s Ward will unlikely see much use in their current states. The new pull on F1 looks nice, even though there really isn’t any reason to have it out of sync with the base virtue. The block on F3 seems like a good skill, even though the cooldown is still pretty atrocious.

I just don’t think it’s nearly worth taking the traitline and sacrificing any core Guardian traitline for, and I still think that even with the changes. As noted above, even the things that I like are limited by drawbacks that I feel take away from what it could be.

And I still would rather pretend that traps don’t actually exist.

When the skill was originally revealed, I had been under the impression that you would indeed shadowstep to your foe, and then shadowstep back to your original position as you pulled your foe with you.

I feel like from a utility standpoint that would make much more sense. Having to travel to your enemy kind of defeats the purpose of a pull.

OP, build variety in this game has been mostly myth from the beginning. Just ask pretty much any class how many of their utility skills and/or traits end up going almost entirely unused.

Nike.2631:

Good luck convincing anyone with actual say in the matter than f1-f3 are weak or that medi-guardian needs to be better.

I don’t think you’ll succeed.

To be honest, I think there are a lot of people in this thread alone who are suggesting that at least the untraited base versions of each virtue leave quite a lot to be desired. I’m not sure what falls under your undoubtedly subjective definition of people with “actual say in the matter”, but I’d file that under “hard evidence” myself.

To be entirely honest, in many cases I prefer the look of the asymmetrical shoulder piece.

And like the guy above said, in some cases it could be justified. A shield would likely be heavier because it would be built for durability, whereas a sword wielded alongside it would probably be lighter to allow for swift strikes to cut through enemies more quickly.

Nickthemoonwolf.1485:

Hunter.4783:

Switching from Guardian:
- Absolutely nothing!

I am sick and tired of all our suggestions/complaints falling on deaf ears and taking some skills/abilities 2+ years to be fixed (like shield)

Also sick of having our ICONIC utility line (spirit weapons) be worthless for again…the last 2 years without a single attempt at improving them.

Looking forward to rolling with a class where actually our complaints/suggestions are taken seriously

We all know you wont be swapping off of guardian.

I know I will. 3 years of “in a good spot”, with that spot being a point too far away for me to hurt my running enemy that I can’t CC, is more than enough for me.

Noctis.3426:

Karl McLain.5604:

Puncture Shot: We’re also looking at the base and bounce functionality

Karl McLain: Do you have anything that you want to share with us about the PS bounce functionality before launch? or any incoming changes to the Longbow in general

I’ve been wondering about this as well. It seems like Karl said it would be “looked into”, but he never actually addressed whether or not that actually happened, and what the rationale would be if they’ve just decided not to bother changing it.

Buran.3796:

Darknicrofia.2604:

Vogel.9613:

Switching from Guard:
- Wall of Reflection
- Easy access to stability and condi cleanse

you can trait to gain 2 stacks of stab per dodge, pretty sure that’s even easier access than guards.

Is not even close; you will not save evades (which must be used mostly against burst and dangerous attacks) just for having stability on demand, which means that oftenly when you will need that stab will not be there.

As guardian having good access to stab/stunbreakers and condition clensing will be the things I’ll miss the more.

If you’re playing Shiro at least, Riposting Shadows is an evading skill that grants 50 endurance and cleanses cripple/chill/immobilize. So it really shouldn’t be too hard to keep some sort of on-demand stability.

Obtena.7952:

Black Box.9312:

Obtena.7952:

Black Box.9312:

Saiyan.1704:

Black Box.9312:

Asmodal.6489:

Black Box.9312:

I don’t need to drop $50 to playtest the DH because I have more than enough hours on my Guardians to know that this is not at all what the class needs to remain competitive.

rofl
are you serious?? you are one the most vocal vocies against the DH and you have zero playtime on the elite spec?

You have literally no experience how the bow behaves, how the damage feels, what numbers you can actually produce, how traits connect and what not and you are dissing the elite spec and everyone who has even the slightest love for the spec.

you act like a know it all and yet you know nothing from first hand experience.

incredible. I do not care how much experience you have on the core class.
Thats like saying “I know how chinese food tastes. it sucks! I havnt had it yet but I am very well experienced at eating.”

Please put an “I assume…” infront of you posts from now on. jeezus.

I know enough about the game and the base class to not need to play it. I’ve seen videos and talked to guildies that have tried it. That’s given me more than enough information to know that it’s not worth my time.

You can’t tell anyone anything about the DH because you have, literally, 0 experience with the Specialization.

We are saying that, out of personal experience in 3 BWE weekends, that DH is a certain way.

You’re saying it’s the complete opposite and have 0 experience to back it up.

When there’s a difference of opinion, like this thread, you realize why we can’t take what you’re saying seriously right?

If an artist draws a deformed figure and calls it a human being, I don’t have to have personal drawing experience to be able to tell how it’s deformed and what is wrong with the drawing.

Would personal experience help? Probably. But not by a great enough degree for it to be worth me dropping $50 to try it when I can look at what I see and put the pieces together in my head.

Your example outlines why you are wrong; lack of experience. You can comment on the picture because you have experience what a head looks like. YOu don’t have that same experience with DH to form an opinion about how ‘deformed it’s head is’.

True, it might not be worth $50 for you to try it and no one faults you for that. The complaint here is you’re soapboxing your opinion based on zero experience, purely based on speculation and heresay. There is actually no reason anyone should pay attention to what you have to say, since there are people with actual experience at this point worth discussing things with.

Cool. I’ve talked with people who have tried it, and still agree with me.

So yeah.

Yes, that’s exactly what heresay means … point made

“Hearsay” would be if I just went with the consensus of the general public. These are people who I know on a personal level that I trust a hell of a lot more than forum apologists.

So no, it’s really not hearsay.

Obtena.7952:

Black Box.9312:

Saiyan.1704:

Black Box.9312:

Asmodal.6489:

Black Box.9312:

I don’t need to drop $50 to playtest the DH because I have more than enough hours on my Guardians to know that this is not at all what the class needs to remain competitive.

rofl
are you serious?? you are one the most vocal vocies against the DH and you have zero playtime on the elite spec?

You have literally no experience how the bow behaves, how the damage feels, what numbers you can actually produce, how traits connect and what not and you are dissing the elite spec and everyone who has even the slightest love for the spec.

you act like a know it all and yet you know nothing from first hand experience.

incredible. I do not care how much experience you have on the core class.
Thats like saying “I know how chinese food tastes. it sucks! I havnt had it yet but I am very well experienced at eating.”

Please put an “I assume…” infront of you posts from now on. jeezus.

I know enough about the game and the base class to not need to play it. I’ve seen videos and talked to guildies that have tried it. That’s given me more than enough information to know that it’s not worth my time.

You can’t tell anyone anything about the DH because you have, literally, 0 experience with the Specialization.

We are saying that, out of personal experience in 3 BWE weekends, that DH is a certain way.

You’re saying it’s the complete opposite and have 0 experience to back it up.

When there’s a difference of opinion, like this thread, you realize why we can’t take what you’re saying seriously right?

If an artist draws a deformed figure and calls it a human being, I don’t have to have personal drawing experience to be able to tell how it’s deformed and what is wrong with the drawing.

Would personal experience help? Probably. But not by a great enough degree for it to be worth me dropping $50 to try it when I can look at what I see and put the pieces together in my head.

Your example outlines why you are wrong; lack of experience. You can comment on the picture because you have experience what a head looks like. YOu don’t have that same experience with DH to form an opinion about how ‘deformed it’s head is’.

True, it might not be worth $50 for you to try it and no one faults you for that. The complaint here is you’re soapboxing your opinion based on zero experience, purely based on speculation and heresay. There is actually no reason anyone should pay attention to what you have to say, since there are people with actual experience at this point worth discussing things with.

Cool. I’ve talked with people who have tried it, and still agree with me.

So yeah.

Nike.2631:

Like I said. Eyes squinched shut. Because no Dragonhunter could possibly NOT be running the KB trait in small group content where it would be stupid and annoying to have that traited. See icon, kick. Mind closed like a bank vault door.

And who the kitten is the sainted Obal and at what point did they gain the ability to see through time? Because some of the changes we just got have NEVER been played yet. I’d love to hear how that got factored into this prophetic judgment.

I’d rather not take the risk. And Obal is DnT’s Guardian specialist; he has a thread stickied above.

Nike.2631:

Don’t feed the troll. Black Box has already committed to trying to group kick Dragonhunters the moment he sees them because not only does he know your character better than you do, he knows the absolute maximum potential of a class he has never and will never play. We’re not talking about blindness anymore, this is squinching your eyes shut so you can’t possibly see how wrong you might be.

The sad thing is that I’m not really even trolling. I know for a fact that I wouldn’t want someone in my party with an RNG knockback that happens every 10 seconds. Rangers using longbow 4 is annoying enough as it is.

Obal has already said that DH is not worth taking in PvE anyway, so I’d be just fine doing it with a clean conscience.

Vogel.9613:

Switching from Guard:
- Wall of Reflection
- Easy access to stability and condi cleanse

Pretty much this. I wish there was more, but there’s good reason why I’ll be switching.

Saiyan.1704:

Black Box.9312:

Asmodal.6489:

Black Box.9312:

I don’t need to drop $50 to playtest the DH because I have more than enough hours on my Guardians to know that this is not at all what the class needs to remain competitive.

rofl
are you serious?? you are one the most vocal vocies against the DH and you have zero playtime on the elite spec?

You have literally no experience how the bow behaves, how the damage feels, what numbers you can actually produce, how traits connect and what not and you are dissing the elite spec and everyone who has even the slightest love for the spec.

you act like a know it all and yet you know nothing from first hand experience.

incredible. I do not care how much experience you have on the core class.
Thats like saying “I know how chinese food tastes. it sucks! I havnt had it yet but I am very well experienced at eating.”

Please put an “I assume…” infront of you posts from now on. jeezus.

I know enough about the game and the base class to not need to play it. I’ve seen videos and talked to guildies that have tried it. That’s given me more than enough information to know that it’s not worth my time.

You can’t tell anyone anything about the DH because you have, literally, 0 experience with the Specialization.

We are saying that, out of personal experience in 3 BWE weekends, that DH is a certain way.

You’re saying it’s the complete opposite and have 0 experience to back it up.

When there’s a difference of opinion, like this thread, you realize why we can’t take what you’re saying seriously right?

If an artist draws a deformed figure and calls it a human being, I don’t have to have personal drawing experience to be able to tell how it’s deformed and what is wrong with the drawing.

Would personal experience help? Probably. But not by a great enough degree for it to be worth me dropping $50 to try it when I can look at what I see and put the pieces together in my head.

Ensign.2189:

Terra.8571:

The only thing to add here, that most people forget, is sword 1 usually only hits 1 target unless your enemies are stacked together. And sword 2 has really low dps compared to the rest of the chain. Only 3 hits 3 targets with a lot of force.

The 2nd attack of the chain (which I think you’re talking about) actually hits quite hard, since the projectile hits both coming and going – it’s a total of 1.05 power ratio for a 0.75s animation, for a 1.4 ratio/second that puts it above every other attack chain in the game. Every single attack in the chain is crazy good, there are no holes.

Brutal Blade is being reworked to be a standard slash attack. So this could really go either way as far as how it affects the DPS, but it will likely cleave now, thankfully.