Glass Guardian would like a word with you.
This is true in a 1 v 1, but you know as well as I do that DPS guardian cannot serve the same function/purpose on a team that a thief can. The guardian cannot engage the back line dps, burst, and disengage.
That’s true; dps Guardians are extremely strong in 1 vs 1 (non Necro) fights and in n vs n skirmishes at the center node of the maps, but outside combat they lack mobility to be an effective invader or jump between control points to assist their team in proper time.
But that’s fine, Thieves are the best at kill assist and marauding between points, which can provide enough pressure to change the tide of a match; they are lacking as point holders, so they shine in some other aspects of the game so they are viable and useful. Tha’s good, every class mut have at least one or two areas in which they can remain competitive, avoiding being so dominant in every department that render some others obsolete.
I think that is ok. Not great or fine but ok. Since December 10th you gain 15 silver coins every time you lose a team pvp match, and you gain 30 x victory (limited to 5 gold coins/day), so now you can have fun and get small earnings in return. You can also use 1.5k glory + 20 silvercoins to increase the PvE levels of your toons, buy 20 slot bags for 6k glory + 6 gold coins and some other things, with helps to make this part of the game more rewarding.
In terms of balance/gameplay some builds are still dominant due the limited nature of the only game mode, which damages the variety, but still the combat experience is so fluid, fast and thrilling compared against some other games (Diablo III, TESO, I’m looking at you) that the game is still attractive and addictive despite the said limitations.
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This changes won’t affect a bit neither my WvW or my PvP builds, but can’t wait to show the naive players how useless Spirit Weapon builds still be.
I’m all about finishers which proves your rank/time with the game. The new one looks good -as the mini-nuke from the SA Box-, but I think that the Phoenix finisher is 10.000.000 times more amazing; doesn’t matter how cool the new ones looks.
Edit: sadly Skyhammer detracted part of the value of the PvP rank.
(edited by Buran.3796)
I don’t think that mobility is a problem in PvP; with GS, Scepter and JI is more than enough to poke most of foes and range and burst them at cqc in the base or the center of the map (don’t forget that what matters is the control over the points). Of course if you want to play as a “invader” and to take control over the enemy base you will be supassed in mobility by (at least) Thieves, Warriors, Rangers and Mesmers, but being a DPS Guardian doesn’t mean that your role is to being able to decap any point in the map, but being able to fastly cut down enemies in your base or the center. And Scepter auto attacks + immobilize works wonder to force people to flee away.
Oftenly I see the word “zerg” to call a very large enemy army (from 20 to 40), with a organized structure, premade builds and a good level of coodination.
“Blob” usually involves larger groups, starting at 40+ players, and less coodination (i.e.: the karma trains that are composed mostly from ramdoms, oftenly upleveled characters with no premade builds/gear/food).
But the taxonomics are hard due some T1 servers use a single commander x map leading the entire population but they (despite the huge total number) can be very disciplined and carry premade builds specifically tailored for a defined goal, instead ob being a simple conglomerate of heterogeneous randoms.
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If you mean in raids: Hammer/Axe+Warhorn or Hammer/Sword + Warhorn.
Go Warrior. Guardians have better team support, but their base HP is tiny (which oftenly compromises the gear they can wear), his mobility outside combat is terrible (and inside fight forces you to make specifical choices) and also, Guardians lacks build variety (no viable condition builds, no viable cc builds). I say this as a player who mains a Guardian but has two lvl 80 Warriors; Warriors are currently in better shape and are more fun to play due the amount of viable builds and weapon variety.
^ I was talking -and thinking- mostly about raid groups, from 15 to 25 members, organized in the same guild under the same VOIP and with gear and build tailored to work together. Under that conditions Warriors provide cc, swiftness and condition cleansing, paired with phenomenal sustain and good damage. Those specs are achieved using hammer + warhorn, which are the weapons that scale the best in such numbers and therefore optimal in a raid (in which the main objective must be that every character adds suppoort to the group).
Of course, in smaller teams, or roaming-oriented squads, much more diversity is available in terms of Warrior builds. But for guilds of “decent” size and under the current last patch I didn’t see a better meta for Warriors. So far if raids based on Warriors using longbows, rifles or maces, or Guardians using scepters and torches were viable then would be seen. But is not ther case.
For a year and half I barely touched PvP (I was rank 11 at the middle of December last year). This was mainly due the disconection between PvP and the rest of the game (no rewards, nerfed stats, no synergies with other game modes).
Since the last days of December and after the patch in that month things changed a lot: I did start to play dayly in PvP and achieved rank 30, and so did a lot of the members on my guild (which also mostly avoided this part of the game). There are some reasons for the changes: now PvP somewhat rewards your time with silver coins, not enough to be a competitive way of farm but enough to justify the time you spent in. Also, glory can be usefull to uplevel your lowies with little effort. You can also get a decent amount of extra AP (which doesn’t bother me at all, I’m almost at 9k even if PvE is the part I play the least).
But the real reason I now play PvP is due the fights; I only play team conquest (no hot join or solo) despite in 2/3 of my matches I don’t play with fellows of my guild: I play it due is fun (honestly, the combat system in Guild Wars 2 is excellent, by far the best one I tried in any MMO to date, and even better than most of action games -including Diablo-). I also want to rank up to get new finishers -I don’t like any buyable finisher in the game due they don’t stand for/mean nothing, I want finishers that reflects my efforts in PvP-.
I think that part of my recent love affaire with PvP is due the stagnation in WvW, which ends favouring the servers with most coverage, with tons of servers being afraid to battle GvG in open field, with their players tamed, afraid to battle outside huge blobs or the safety of their T3 walls. PvP, despite lacking in game modes and map variety, is filling my lust for blood, and is being a good place to hone my skills.
Also, no other class in GW2 is capable of combining top survivability, top CC, top damge and top buff/debuff capabilities all in one build. I wont say the damge the warrior deals is OP, I wont say the survivability is OP, I wont even say the CC’s or the buffs are OP. I just say that the combination of all those aspects are OP. You can have your damage. But don’t claim to be tanky and specced with a hell lot of CC’s at the same time. And that’s the problem with the warrior right now.
Necros. They stack high survability, high damage and high cc in the same build, with much less noticeable animations, large range, better AoE and less effort required to play.
As a player which mains a Guardian but also plays a Warrior I’m very happy about how Warriors are hard counters against Necros taking in consideration how effortleless a Necro is able to melt my Guardian. Warrior’s hammers already take a huge dent in their damage AND cc capabilities after the downgrades in both the traits and the synergies with another weapons and sigils (mace nerf, sigil of paralyzation nerf).
Also, there’s a thing to understand about the WvW raid meta: hammers ALWAYS will be the tool of choice for Warriors, even if damage is nerfed to 200 x hit. The other weapons just aren’t supportive enough for the team to replace the hammers, in the same way as staffs can’t be replaced in the loadout of any raid Guardian. Deal with it.
Is not the best (aka: mos aggressive) loadout in a duel for a meditation fencer (that would probably involve scepter, focus, sword and torch, maybe mace instead of one of them) but is excellent in conquest due in n vs n lets you blind in AoE, hit in AoE and interrupt in AoE. Hammer can be a good replacement but lacks mobility and is more oriented towards a holder/decapper role. Sword is better in 1 vs 1 but there’s a ton of times in which you will be fighting in the center of the map against “#” foes and in those circumstances you will miss the GS (or a good hammer).
Is awesome but at the same time very situational (Unscathed Contender, use of a buff from a Tome which has a huge cooldown…).
When everything is said and done with coming the next big balance patch warriors will be in worst shape than they were before ANET decided to overhaul this class because of the power creep they did to the other professions and meanwhile they would have significantly buffed other professions that didn’t need buffed guardians for example all while nerfing warriors
Ha. Guardians lost 5k HP from the beta to the final release of the game (fair, was needed for balance), then they get a nerf in Vigorous Precision (cooldown from 1 second to 5), a nerf in the Spirit Weapons, a nerf in Pure of Voice and now a new nerf in VP again (from 5 to 10 seconds in the cooldown). Meanwhile ANet buffed skills and traits that no Guardian uses at all (Glacial Heart, Healing Breeze… ).
The only relevant buff Guardians get since the game release was the increase in the projectile speed in Scepter and making the meditations instant (changes which only affects a niche builds in roaming and PvP). So stop to moan: at least you have viable builds in every spect of the game and usefull builds in the current meta based on conditions.
I think that Guardians are currently in very bad shape, and the gap will be wide along the time. Some reasons:
- Since the Summer the patches favoured more and more the condition builds, and Guardians don’t have any reliable build based on conditions. Condition builds only need one stat (condition) to deal solid damage, so they can asign the other two to vitality and thoughness, so they are very tanky in terms of stats and can achieve high sustainibility based on the weapons and skills they chose.
-These changes heavily counters the Guardian bunker meta game: condition damage ignores armor, and Guardians have a very low HP. Blocks and blinds have very low impact against a foe which uses a constant stream of conditions through autoattacks. Those constant reaply of conditions also diminishes the usefulness of the condition cleanses.
-The perfect nemesis that summarizes how the current meta hard counters Guardians are the Necros: they can turn all your buffs in a debuff with a single skill, they can fill you with conditions and stacks of them in matter of seconds and they can use a ton of soft cc (fear, cripple, chill…) while their conditions keep working melting your HP.
I think that currently organized teams based in the use of 1-2 Necros and 1-2 Warriors works much better than any combination which involves Guardians. Guardians are also a very narrowed in terms of viable builds, making them really boring compared against other classes. I say this as a player which mains a Guardian but which is having much more fun/success just using their (I have two ones) Warriors.
^ Does that means that Guardians will be in line with another classes in terms of condition damage, Voltric? Because evades are almost the only thing that prevent Guardins for being melted in five to ten seconds under the attacks of a single Condimancer.
To be honest, evades doesn’t be as crucial against foes capables to spam a constant stream of conditions, due -sigils aside- in the first minute of fight a Guardian will be able to potentially perform about 6,9 evades (the two first ones + another one each 10 seconds), and permanent vigor will add at most another 2 ones. With the new patch we are talking about maybe an extra evade x minute instead of two.
Anyway, I’m almost done with this class: as soon as I get the Champion Parangon achievement (left a few dozens) I’ll focus my time in sPvP/dungons in one of my Warriors. In year and half the only valuable change in Guardians was the enhance of the speed in the scepter bolts. The stalemate and lack of variety/incentives in this class is such embarrasing (I almost regret the Twilight I did forge for Him).
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^ I already tried that. Doesn’t work too well due some Necros can release up to 5 “fear” attacks in matter of seconds, so the gap closers we have are easily negated while they still spam attacks at range. I usually run a build with 2 meditations and “stand your ground!”, so trying to beat a condimancer with strong sources of terror without a single stability must be next to impossible, at equal levels of skill.
Currently the Warrior is in best shape due they have more available builds (burst dps, cc, condi bunker) and had much better mobility and due the have a lot more HP and beter regen (and some nice immunities) they can fit any role in the game.
Guardians are great for WvW raids (Warriors are also) and Wall of Reflection is usefull in dungeons… but that’s all. I have five 80’s (2 Warriors and a Guardian, which is my main) and I play my Guardian for sentimental reasons (I find Warriors much more fun and effective in the current meta of the different departments of the game).
@Sad Tas: for a Guardian is not expected in the current PvP/roaming meta to survive against a condition based build, specially if we are talking about a Necro.
Take this in consideration: condition builds are specifically tailored to deliver high amount of damage in a constant stream of attacks; since condition damage only requires “condition” stats those builds can save the other stats for being very “tanky” (vitality and toughness). Sadly the same the same isn’t true for non condition builds: they usually demands power, precission (crit chance) and crit damage in order to deal with the enemy so sacrifices in terms of sustainability must be made.
What makes the thing even worse is that condition damage ignores armor, so look at the picture: Guardians are the class (along Eles) with the least amount of HP, geared with a heavy armor which is meaningless against condition builds, provided with blocks and cleanses with a very limited efficiency against a foe which constantly reapply conditions through autoattacks.
So, if your Guardian is a dps build you will probably fall defeated before the foe is down because those builds have too much HP and armor (oftenly also tons of cc) to deal with. And if you ride a bunker build you just can expect a slow death poked at range.
The only way to counter this (in a 1 vs 1) would be using a condition build; sadly condition builds aren’t viable to Guardians (we lack bleeding sources or venom sources because for lore reasons isn’t expected for Guardians such kind of tools) due our fire damage is just a support tool to get access to Fiery Wrath. And anyway, fire damage stacks in duration, not in intensity, so when you land 2 sources of fire in a target the second one doesn’t acts until the first one ends (which explains why fire isn’t a reliable source of condition damage).
Sorry but that’s the truth.
I agree on the guardian thing and I think biggest part of the problem is Stand your Ground.
Stunbreak, AoE stability and Retaliation on a 24 second cooldown always has been silly.
In the current landscape dominated by condtions and passive gameplay Guardians doesn’t have a chance against classes as Necros, doesn’t matter if we talk about Guardian bunkers or meditation builds. Of course, with the vigor nerf which the new patch introduces they will be even more useless.
Once more teams find out how extremely weak are Guardians against builds capables to spam conditions they will be erradicated from any decent roster, and after their fall their absence will collapse the lifespan of non-condition builds. Soon every match will be not “only” dominated by condispammers and passive builds but entirely consistent on them.
So guardian is ignored as usual.
Nope. If you had a Guardian roamer you will be in much worse situation, due Guardians don’t have condition builds.
The changes only nerfs builds based in physical damege; doesn’t matter if we talk about burst builds like Guardians based on meditations or tank builds based on more HP and Armor. Both will suffer due both rely on physical damage and both use evades and had evade healing (most of times).
Instead, builds based in conditions like the dire/carrion Warrior will be as fine as before, if not better.
The Healing Signet got nerfed in this very patch, so I’m not sure that comparison holds much weight. Also, the healing a meditation guardian can put out just with Monk’s Focus is pretty large in my eyes. Not that I think that warriors are balanced.
Warriors take a dent of 7,5% (from 392 x sec to 362 x sec in their Healing Signet passive regeneration, which means not much (anyway that signet didn’t bother me at all) while we take a massive cooldown penalty in our active defense. Is not even remotely equal. In a 60 sec rotation the three meditations + Shelter + F2 passive + F2 activasion still fell behind the sustained 392 x sec from Warrior’s (not even taking into the equation banners or healing shouts).
Also, Warriors currently had 3 viable healing skills (all of them valuable, people is abusing HS just because doesn’t require any management), whereas Guardians had one good healing skills (Shelter) another mediocre one (Signet of Resolve) and two useless ones (Heling Breeze and Litany).
I don’t want nerfs against Warriors, I think we had the tools to deal against them; with a 10% reduction in or dps and a 1/3 reduction in our evading potential I no longer known how a Guardian can deal against a condition bunker -no matter what class- if equal skill is involved. Is like a feather weight against a cruise weight.
I am actually a little disappointed with the changes. I’ve always felt that vigorous precision was to help offset the low health pool. There are so many weaknesses to this profession that adding another seems a little foolish. The proposed change to Litany is also very saddening, even if you were to make it instant, i’d still take Shelter only because you’d have to do consistent damage to make up for the health needed, which is one of the Guardian’s weaknesses.
I don’t feel it was ever Anets intentions to have any class with perma vigor uptime. Guardian’s low hp pool makes sense when you consider the amount of healing sources and boons they have access to.
A dps meditation Guardian has a lesser combined healing potential than a Warrior just using the Healing Signet passive effect (not counting shouts, tactic banner, etc.). A meditation Guardian has also a small access to boons due their own nature. The patch makes our class useles for WvW outside raids/zergs, and redundant in any PvE content in which Wall of Reflection isn’t required.
The patch does nothing to enhance the build diversity for Guardians, kills entirely one kind of build, and doesn’t adress the lack of usability of wasted space in our trait lines (dem spirit weapon traits).
Yep, condi warrior roaming is extremely powerful even now.
but then again.. pretty much every class is a condi roamer now.
Not Guardians. Without condition builds available, and with the nerfs in damage, vigor cooldown and selfness Daring roaming Guardians will be a extincted race.
The patch will both damage build diversity, skill and the previous efforts from tons of players to gear up their characters and builds. Is such an epic disaster.
PvP in GW1 became all about degen builds and hexes for the final years of the game. Is it really any surprise that the lazy balance philosophy is being carried over to this iteration?
Everything is going to be conditions and removing conditions now. All hail the necro/Guardian/Warrior era (for those of you who aren’t already there).
Guardians has no viable condition builds. This patch will break the meditation dps guardian builds, meaning that Guardians no longer will be viable as a WvW roaming class. We have no acces to venom or bleedings, and fire is used only as support to enhance the phsysical damage. Bunker Guardians are useless for roaming due they can be poked to death at range.
I also refuse to play Guardian bunkers in sPvP due they are overall boring to play and doesn’t get as much rewards as offensive builds.
I think that the patch will push me very near the limit of leaving the game; I’m already tired about to grind for new gear with every new change; for sure some of my set-ups will be useless after this. Happy that I didn’t made a single ascendant armor piece…
On a whole I believe they looking to reduce active defence across the board. One of their first steps to improve roles, build diversity, events & encounters.
Do I like losing the easy permanent vigor NO. On a hold I don’t think the game was balanced around permanent vigor but if this can help improve the above aspects them I take the hit.
Active defense promotes skillful play. It’s also a compensation for our low HP and lack of invulnerabilities. Otherwise is better to play with a Warrior, because Wall of Reflection is only needed in a few dungeons, you known. In WvW/PvP the vigorous precision nerf (the new one, due the trait was already nerfed in the past) is huge. Condinecros already laugh at our faces, wait the patch to see them laughing even harder.
^ I don’t agree because in this game in PvE tanks aren’t viable: you can’t tank a hit that insta-kills you (Arah abomination) so rely in evades (that requires some skill to use) seemed a good trade for a support class which has laughlable HP.
Losing both vigor (which was already nerfed time ago) along with 10% extra damage seems a fatal blow to a class which lacks any viable condition dps build. Some classes like condition Necros or condition Warriors were already a ultra-hard counter to meditation Guardians due they outperform us in HP, sutainibilty and constant damage (Necros even in burst damage) so with a 10% less damage and less evades they will laugh even harder in our faces.
I also disagree about the “good state” of the class in the different landscapes of the game: for PvE our only use is to provide Wall Of Reflection and Stability, otherwise I would chose a Warrior or Engineer as a partner everytime in the game. Of course we are still strong in WvW raids, but for roaming/duels the incoming patch will ban Guardians to oblivion.
….Goodbye zerker guard?
More like goodbye guard. Or at least goodbye roaming guard. Is not like guardian had a condition or cc viable build if suddenly dps builds stops to work. Which is what will happen.
So they aren’t only making useless hundred of gold coins and hours invested in gearing several sets along my character roster (my Guardian alone has 6 entire set armors, so does my Warrior) turning all the effort to achieve the desired items into ashes but they also nerf (for second time) the only useful tool that skilled Guardian players has against non-AI targets (I mean: the lack of vigor doesn’t have relevance against PvE content because PvE content in this game is ultra easy, but lacking evades being a class with barely 13k base HP just will destroy us in PvP/WvW.
And meanwhile we have four useless spirit weapon skills and five useless spirit weapon traits filling slots in our character sheet… Great.
I’m so glad because I didn’t bother to create a ascendant armor (and at the same time I feel so sorry for the fellow members in my guild that get trapped in this clusterkitten). This patch is a giantic slap in the face of the long run players in the game; is not our fault if ArenaNet botched the internal balance of the PvE content making no-zerk gear progressively useless. My WvW/PvP builds doesn’t deserve to be scorched (and the time and effort in them being wasted) just because they realized that the game isn’t played as they intended. Is their fault if dungeons are designed to avoid most of the pulls and then to nuke the other ones and the bosses in the same corner.
Bad news, taking in consideration that in a couple of months there will be a lot of competition in terms of new games around the corner…
can any class beat two warriors in 2v2? (obviously equally skilled)
^ Sometimes is like rock, paper, scissors. I saw a lot of Necros writing about how hard counter are hammer Warriors against them; but I had no much troubles against Warriors as a class using a Guardian, whereas at the same time Necros are a brutal uphill to me.
I barely did play sPvP in the first year and half due the lack of rewards and small connection with other parts of the game (PvE, WvW) but after the Dec 10 patch I started to play everyday to get the dailies and I found that was having found even in the defeats, reaching lvl 20 in three weeks (playing only ranked matches).
The two main diferences between my recen experiences and the ones from the past were that # 1 now, with the silver rewards and leveling scrolls I feel that I’m helping my own account and my characters, and # 2 I changed my -deficient- old build (a guardian bunker) for a dps one so my role is a lot more active and fun.
IMO the two main problems that still reamins in PvP are the lack of several game modes and the lack of instant access to (in a f2p way) potential players. GW2 PvP has potential but will not be able to compete against games as LoL or Dota 2 without a f2p client -even if confined to PvP only and 1 character slot only- and without a new gameplay mode. I think that the combat is great and there’s room to build a kind of MOBA game mode around the current design of classes and skills and traits.
For roaming is hard to find synergies between hammer and rifle, due none of them provide too much mobility and also both weapons fight for the use of your adrenaline.
Hammer + longbow works well in PvP due usually you don’t need to flee away and because the Combustive Shot helps a lot to replenish the adrenaline bar and because people fights for the control points so is easier to catch them in those -usually small- areas. In WvW works worse due the size o the landscape and the lack of mobility.
You didn’t found advice about a rifle + hammer loadout because the synergies are almost none. If you land a Earthshake then your adrenaline barr is depleted and then your only burst is Volley which compared with Hundred Blades or Flurry isn’t that great. If you land a Kill Shot (most of times at range) and you want to use the hammer you still need to close the gap.
Maybe if your only goal is to kill people at range with the rifle the cc from the hammer can complement your Rifle Butt in oder to keep people away from you, but the combination of hammer and rifle doesn’t seems to be optimal, imo.
Extrictly for WvW: AH works great.
The most supportive builds in WvW raids usually run with Pure of Voice/Battle Pressence and Absolute Resolution + Indomitable Courage. From these ones I find Battle Pressence an absolute waste due the intensity of the effect is meaningless: heals in raids happens mostly in the reagroups, when the water fields are used, or along the charges while some Guardians unleash the Tome of Courage. Must also be noted that in order to provide some degree of effective healing through Battle Presence you need to gear up with Cleric stats, which will have a hit in your HP pool. Personaly I think that those kind of healway builds only works well in small roaming groups, and for raids I`ll chose Pure of Voice + Absolute Resolution + Indomitable Courage in order to retain a superb level of support in cleansing condition.
Now, about Altruistic Healing, this trait can be absolutely fine in WvW raids, but demands a very different approach. If the number of Guardians in a raid is high enough (fairly common in most guilds) then some of them can be tailored in a more offensive way. I was using sometimes a 0/15/30/20/5 build, with Blind Exposure, Strenght in Numbers, Retributive Armor, Altruistic Healing, Superior Aria and Empowering Might traits. This build is mean to use Soldier Runes and still to retain a 40% crit chance before boons or food. The basic mechanic is simple: you spam Staff 1, which hits at range in a broad area, which in large fights means a lot of hits and tons of crits; those crits provide stacks of might for you and your allies enhancing your offensive capabilities and giving you extra heals. Also, in the team reagroups Empower can refill your whole health (3 times each minute). You can also blind foes and apply vulnerability and being able to spam those conditions each time a foe dies. You support is still strong (Soldier runes + the usual shouts + Inspired Virtue). You aren’t as oriented towards condition cleansing as the Pure of Voice + Absolute Resolution but you still provide strong boon support, decent coindition cleansing and your survability is better due the constant streaming of critical hits and the semi-spammable blindness. You also hit harder.
For PvP: AH can work wonders in some bunker builds. Staff + AH + Two Handed Mastery means an extra heal each 16 seconds, which is huge.
For PvE: almost any build is viable for PvE, no big problem here.
^ The builds are in the links below the video in the description at Youtube.
Awesome fights and superb skills, Manu. I have some questions about the gameplay, but let me first to share my concerns in a more explained context:
For a year and half I ‘ve been more oriented towards WvW raids and PvE than to sPvP and roaming. In sPvP I wasn’t satisfied about my builds (tank variants) due I wasn’t able to hold the points and barely was able to kill anything. After a long hiatus I did start to play sPvP a few weeks ago, this time using a double meditation build (10/10/30/20/0); the traits are II/III//I, X, XII/II, IX/. I’m using a berserker amulet and greatsword and hammer as weapons, with sigils of energy and hydromancy; the armor runes I use are the Soldier ones.
The reason due I use GS + Hammer is due most of control points in sPvP are very narrow (ouside the central area in Foefire’s Legacy) so is easy to hit multiple targets at the same time and therefore improving the support to my team. For similar reason I only use 2 meditations (JI and Smite Condition), keeping one slot for the shout “Stand Your Ground!”, which provides stability, condition cleansing and retaliation for me and my party.
My questions are: how hard is to play with a triple meditation build (aka: no stability sources) with the current meta of the game in sPvP and WvW roaming (lots of hammer-Warriors, Terrormancers and other heavy cc builds)? Is the sacrifice of HYG worth the gains of having a third meditation? I known that GS/Scepter + Focus (or sword) is better combo for duels than hammer + gs, but you think that scepter is still better in small team vs team skirmishes?
Thanx in advance for your answers :) .
Regards to the fellow Guardian from AR which I fought this afternoon at the AR borderline. I was fighting near the hole in the wall at the bay area but had to flee due the focus of two of you. Then you chase me to the coliseum, laughing at me as a taunt. So we engaged into a long duel in the arena. Was a tense fight due we were very close to defeat on both parts for minutes, and because despite my /bow I wasn’t sure about your manners. So I finally did enjoy putting you down, but canceling the finishing move and ending the fight with a new /bow.
Moa is counterplayed by the fact that even if a morphed target is instantly killed (and the tide of the fight is changed due the subtraction of that player) the player still will be again on play in matter of seconds, whereas the elite skill will be in a cooldown for 3 minutes.
The (usually high) chance of getting a secured kill against the absence of a elite skills along 3 minutes; seems fair to me. I don’t play Mesmers but as a Guardian I known that Necros are a hard counter to Guardians and I like to see that Necros have a hard counter in Moa Morph.
Even when the SW were invulnerable they were at best a bad choice. Back in the days in order to be effective a SW build need to spent so much skill slots and trait slots to enhance the SW performance that at the end they role as support class went compromised. Even worse, some of those SW (hammer) were counter-productive for the task that was intended (to get more dps). If they were almost useless in the past currently they are entirely obsolete, not only due they neither can compete in support or dps roles against other well known builds but also due can be nuked down instantly with a well placed AoE attack. A SW Guardian build is less useful (at any task in the game) than a Thief healer if you known what I mean.
From an out cast Ranger (doesn’t use melee weapons or spirits or bears)
Annoying as Trahearn:
1) Perma Stun Guardians
2) Hambow WarriorRequires Thinking:
[…]
Is “perma stun Guardian” a typo (you mean “perma stun Warrior”?) ? I never heard about a Guardian outside the classical holders (bunker builds), burst dps (meditation builds) and some hybrids. In fact I’m having troubles to figure which weapon have the Guardians to induce stun.
- Usually Shelter works better as healing than the Signet of Resolve; heals a similar amount over time without having to sacrifice a trait while prevents tons of incoming damage due the block.
- I would replace one of your utility skills by Stand Your Ground! Life without any source of stability is hard and short.
- For zerg support replace one of your weapons by a staff. In large groups staff 1 (and 4 in the reagroups) is very much all you need to use in zerg clashes. Both GS and Hammer work well with staff in WvW, as they provide cc. But GS + Hammer is better in sPvP due oftenly the control points are very narrow and you can hit several foes at the same time. For roamning/duels GS + H is very unusual; oftenly a better choice is just pair one of them with focus and sword or scepter.
Could be a fantastic game mode if happens, specilly if is tailored for either 5 vs 5 to 10 vs 10 players at most.
Just made a well scaled map (maybe of the size of the current ruins in the borderline ones), put “towers” with huge amount of HP and high damage (maybe some sort of stationary Giganticus Lupicus), put Orr abominations and some other nasty foes instead of the generic creeps from other MOBAs, add some event mechanics as in the sPvP maps (to enhance the deep of the gamneplay) and voila!: you will have a very enjoyable competitive mp ready to shake the market.
The only two handicaps would be: how to implement a buying mechanic along the matches (due currently in both WvW and sPvP your gear stays the same)? And: could it compete against games which are free to play -you still need to buy GW2 to play it-?
So far the current sPvP game mode is a bit limited in terms of gameplay: you have tons of room to customize your class, traits, gear and skills, but once the match starts the gameplay mechanics in a standard GW2 PvP game isn’t much deeper than a standard TDM or CTF shooter, well behind of typoical MOBAs or RTS games.
5 Mesmers all have mass invis
1. Mass invis
2. call illusion berserker at the same target = instant down
3. all chaos storm on down target
4. Mass invis and so on…
Mesmers are superb for dueling and 1 vs 1 fights -not so hot for roaming due they are very mobile in fights but their pace outside combat is slow, as happens with other classes as Guardians and Necros-. But in group fights they scale poorly -the more people involved, the less convenient is adding new Mesmers- due the combined AoE damage of the enemy players will melt those clones/phantasms due the not-functional A.I.
If riding some Mesmers (3-5 of them) nuking everything in their path were as effective then it would be a constant in WvW roaming or even in sPvP. What we have, instead, are more diversity in grups but with a dominat role from heavy armor users as long as the scale goes further in the number of members.
I agree; Guardians scale very well with groups because they can provide team stability, damage reduction, aegis and boons while help to remove conditions and they have the tools to farm zergs like no others (1 staff). But in roaming (and to some extent in 1 vs 1 duels) they are one of the weakest class in the game.
They can’t easily disengage from fights, so this alone makes the sub-optimal for roaming purposes; if you fight in a small team you are forced to choose a support role -as currently happens with the Eles- and that means that you will hit as a wet towel. Guardians has also a very small health pool and their armor is entirely useless against the current condition meta so prevalent in small skirmishes.
As guardian, if you trait your skills and weapons to group support you will be demolished by builds tailored to 1 vs 1, specially if they rely in condition spam. If your build, instead, is based on meditations and igh burst your team support greately fades, and still your chances against some classes (almost every necro build, condition mesmers and engineers, condition bunker warriors) arfe minimal.
I give up away my guardian for roaming purposes months ago due the inherent weakness of the class in that department. Bow/swords warrior for roaming alone and hammer warrior for support in small roaming teams are much better and more fun and rewarding to play. I entirely agree with Shino: roaming guardians are a dying breed.
really good work from Baruch today. except from EB you crashed all our towers/keeps. but like yesterday morning, RS can’t forgive you for that
Riverside ended a step above BB in the league just because Vizunah Square wanted it. At fair conditions both servers (RS and BB) had similar potential (you are better at defense, we are better as attackers). But at the moment no one cares too much because the league is over and we are in holidays -anyway, it’s not like the first season league provide much reward to the efforts, so a lot of people couldn’t care less about the regular matchup scores-.
If you have armorsmith up to 400 build a draconic armor with celestial stats as soon as possible; it provides about 150 less power and a 4% less crit chance than a berserker one, but gives you a 3% more crit damage, 1.400 extra HP, a lot more armor and some extra condition damage and healing power. Works well in both PvE, WvW and roaming content. Combine that armor with full berserker trinkets and weapons; with that stats you will not need any other armor except for pure condition builds.
If celestial stats aren’t available (takes a month to refine all the quartz needed) a mix between berserker and knight pieces can be viable). For pure condition builds rabid stats can be obtained from Caudecus, Honor and Arah dungeons (rabid stats).
About the runes, is basically either Soldier or Melandru; the first ones are cheap to produce/buy, the second ones are a bit expensive -and the prices are rising due the demand, justified because their usefulness in the current meta of the game-, but you can get the 6 pieces of the karma armor with the Melandru runes at the Verdeance temple in Orr for about 270.000 karma points and then just transmute the runes.
Notice that soon ascendant armors will be available; celestial stats could be equally appealing based on how scales against other stat distributions.
(edited by Buran.3796)
^ To start, Hammer wasn’t popular at all in dungeons, so I don’t think that the changes would affect too much the PvE content (anyway, Axe 1, 2 and 5 is more than enough for any close combat in dungeons).
For WvW I don’t think that the nerf will change a bit the current share of the Hammer Warrior; maybe it would grow a bit now that Sigil of Torment can be added as extra source of damage. At most, people will move from 0/10/30/0/30 to 0/0/30/10/30 (less damage but even more control).
Looking to the timeline from patch balances for Warriors in the past seems that Arenanet will be forced to move every Adept trait to Master or Grandmaster and leaving empty slots in Adept: they are all overpowered :p
We don’t need more HP. We’d be unstoppable. We could use some other stuff. But not more HP.
I agree in which with a similar HP to a Warrior I would put all my gear in berserker stats and that, combined with the innate defensive abilities of Gardians would make us almost unstoppable.
But the problem is: we have no viable condition builds, we have two almost useless trait lines (from February to the current date all my Guardian builds had either 0/0/30/20/20, 0/0/30/30/10, 0/0/10/30/30 or a 0/0/20/30/20 distribution), four useless summonable weapons that will never earn a slot in my ability skillbar and a blatant lack of mobility (paired with the worst ranged options in the whole game). Can be also argued that Guardians aren’t longer the best bunkers in the game due our armor an blocks means nothing against the current condition meta and our low HP is melted in seconds.
I solved my problems with the Guardian class just using a Warrior instead for most of the game content. It works wonders.
I don’t get the hammer nerfs. They nerfed the power-crit builds moving Berserker’s Power and Heightened Focus to grandmaster tiers, and they nerfed the axe damage displacing most of it to the end of the chain (which means impausible against foes with functional brains). So people leave those weapons for hammers not due hammers did anything new, but because axes and greatswords (which still has a utterly useless burst skill) lost their main appealing: the damage.
So, instead of enhancing GS and axe to appealing levels, they chose to nerf hammers and maces (despite almost no one use them in PvE). Meanwhile the absurdly overpowered runes of perplexity are still in play without a nerf in form of stacks, duration or cooldown.
More contradictory even, as was stated, if there was no intention to made the hammer a control + damage weapon, why -in first instance- Merciless Hammer enhances both sides? The answer is that the hammer damage was already fine: useless in PvE, where bosses have Defiant and not as great in sPvP/WvW where other weapons had a much bigger spike damage. The “problems” started when they nerfer those weapons to almost became non-relevant, in a environment in which hammer was already a lot more solid tool in the WvW raid metagame.
Is also a joke to see those nerfs in damage while the game keeps pushing towards power creep with the ascended stuff, increasing the gap betwen new players and long time dedicated ones, which collides against the rule of making the game based on skill and not on gear/money spent.
Anyway, the changes will not modify my current builds a single bit; they just will make the fights more slow and potentially boring for the foes.
^ I disagree, Vizuna keep the EB castle the whole week until the las day and then they leave it to Jade; also, after being a very balance score in BB borderline for six days in the 7th the focus from both VS and JS was strong enough to reduce our score to 5-10.
IMO Vizuna just did play whith us and then they choose which one left for the second place in the last moment. Is fine due was His prerrogative and was in His hands, but for me was also a lesson: to not invest anymore in the final results of the league.
I don’t longer care about the final score of my own server of the final slot we will find; league is already determined by coverage and fighting for the points is just plain boring. I’ll return to roaming and focus into improve my k/d ratio instead of having this game like a kind of “second job”.
wiped our great and fast opponents (Runes of the Traveler seem to be some kind of standard gear of Auguries and Baruchs)
Not in guild loadouts (in which to my knowledge Soldier runes are a lot more common, whereas AoE swiftness is provided by air fields and war horns) but for some clases in roaming and soloing Traveler runes are almost the only option to prevent being kitted to death.