Guild Wars 2

I think there is a fine line between always thinking the grass is greener on the other side and recognizing and acknowledging limitations and downfalls.

I’m torn between wanting a homogenization between all classes so that we can all play equally and uniqueness so that we have our own specialized role or flare in play style.

If we are the defensive melee fighters, then I’m good with that. But then make us more defensive than anyone else can ever possibly be which makes people reconsider trying to take us on.

If we are the support class then I’m fine with that, but then make us as supportive as possibly can be and unique in our boon capabilities which makes people want us.

If we are an offensive class then make as offensive as possible can be in a way that can melt face and strike fear in the hearts of others.

Right now we get closest to the most defensive class, and maybe support in “some” areas. But in a game with no tanks or healers and everyone has ready access to boons that they, then what is the point of being defensive and support. So then we go offense and that’s when people start to compare how we stand up to others.

I understand there is a disparity in how another class works and how our class works. That is what makes us unique and different. But when our primary and secondary build are less needed and our tertiary build is not as cool as others, it makes people look at those greener pastures.

I could be happy with my pinto. It’s comfortable, it gets me where I need to go, and I have used it this whole time. Then someone drives up in a porsche, then suddenly I realize my car is ok but there is better.

Now the question is, do I try to build up my pinto or do I scrap it and get a porsche, or do I just keep with my status quo and forget about it and just be happy with what I got?

I"m the kind that would like to make what I have as good as possible. Maybe it isn’t ever going to be as fast as the porsche, but I’ll be happy with what I was able to pull off with what I do have.

Updated main post, you all got me kind of negative you debby downers :p

I was really thinking you were going to finish that title of the build with “wrathy”

Very cool info about the testing for night and how some dungeons are always night time. Good to know.

Good reasoning, but pretty negative down talk to your audience. Although I guess that could work in a “only great players use this build, otherwise go back to your training wheels” type of coercion. Works for some I guess.

I don’t PvE too often, so my only question is, Why Sigil of Night. Is it always considered night in some dungeons? or is it night enough for when you are doing dungeons that you gain the full benefit?

Wouldn’t force be the nice in between for 5% all the time instead of 10% sometimes and 0% the rest of the time? I’m sure there is a gimick there that helps make the reason for you to select night, I just don’t know it.

It is annoying, and would seem contradictory to it, but to allow counter play I guess they allowed AE effects to land, which some of the pushbacks and CC are.

Best answer I have to you is stability.

Honestly when I use Sanctuary I use it as area denial and not a safety zone inside of it. So at choke points and the like.

I’ll edit the list later to add block/aegis and blind up there as well.

As far as the list being too defensive and player preference may prefer an offensive setup, that was the original point of the post honestly.

How can we play to our strengths and gain a well rounded offensive build without them being gimicky and not sustainable.

So the built in mechanics of the class to survive while building more towards damage to make up for our lower HP pool and various mobility issues or what ever other downfalls people have felt was lacking in their gameplay.

On a lunch break right now so don’t have time to go into a lot of analysis at the moment, but feedback is always appreciated to help myself and others that may be interested in this topic.

Also I’ll go back and look at ranger, but it seemed like a 1s protection thing on roll I think. (factoring in the time it takes to roll which is 100% mitigated due to evade, and then 1s of up time after the roll is completed).

So it seems like they have frequent protection but not long lasting protection that can cover a 5-20 second period of damage).

Again anything I missed let me know.

I considered block/blind as our “strengths” in the past, but honestly other professions block/blind better.

Blind may still be one of our strengths as we have fast cool down on blind, but warriors can block more frequently than guardians can honestly.

Other professions can blind a lot in a short duration, but on longer cool downs I think, such as blinding powder.

Not really viable as a playable build, but I was messing around with symbols a while back and I ran staff/greatsword in spvp.

I was able to spike damage people with double symbol and whirling wrath to sometimes insta kill them or at least 80-90% them down.

Problem is that most people ran right out of the symbols and I did no damage.

I did get an amazing kill that I wish I recorded where a guy was running for the point and I dropped a line of warding, tripped him, and then double symbol/ww him dead.

He whispered me “at first I was angry, then I was impressed”

lol.

Lol Chritos, scrap all that and just give us GM commands. I think that would make all guardian players much happier all around

Well, thats what we can do, unless someone has more to add.

Now as far as making builds, should we build to our strengths and apply all or most of the above in every guardian build?

Are builds that don’t not as good?

Thoughts.

Good point on the heal being too readily swapped/used. Elites I am still unsure of.

The way it works now with water/land utility swapping is it puts everything that was used on the same cooldown, so if I go in the water and my heal is used, my water heal is also on cool down.

I do like the idea of swapping heals for different utilities (condition removal, adrenalin building, attunement bonuses, and various mechanics like that) but it would have to be limited to not be ready so frequently.

Yet if you were to put the other utilities on cooldown like that, then they become unusable and pointless to swap to anyway.

Heals could be locked out or put on cool down after weapon swapping for a few seconds if that would help alleviate that problem.

Going back and thinking about elites, I think it may be too powerful to have two elites ready and accessible, so I think it would be best to have that locked out as well.

In the long run, I don’t think too much will change, but it doesn’t hurt to voice ideas and maybe it will spark dev thinking as well.

Obtena had a great post in another thread that pretty much said “Play to our strengths”.

That said, I took a second to re-evaluate just what our intended strengths are by the mechanics that the devs put out for us.

So what are our strengths?

• Protection
  We have more frequent sources of protection for longer durations than other professions. This makes sense since we are supposed to be the “defensive, boon based fighters”, yet we have the lowest health pool. so this is supposed to be one of the things that lets us survive.

• Healing
  Per our class mechanics, we are on the lowest tier of health pools, but we are supposed to have that offset by our virtues. Namely Virtue of Resolve. Increasing our healing power directly increases our combat survivability. The usefulness of healing power can be argued, but the best way to increase our effective health is by damage mitigation and healing.

• Regeneration
  This is not something unique to Guardians, as necromancers and other professions can have high up time of regeneration as well, but this plays back onto our effective health from the previous bullet.

• Condition Removal/Conversion
  Guardians have probably the most sources of condition removal or conversion available in our trait lines. This is probably due in part to our low health pool and the need to remove them in order to live.

• Boons
  This can be argued that boons are not specific to Guardians, and it is true, other professions have plenty of access to the boons that they need already, but we do have frequent applications of boons for self and group, which provide support/utility

• Projectile Defense
  We have multiple sources of projectile blocks and reflections, available to any build

• Stability
  We have multiple and fast refreshing, long duration stability sources which help keep CCs off of us and groups.

• Blinds
  Two low cool down blinds on sword and great sword and also spamable AE blind with virtue of justice if traited. Also a blind with focus, but less reliable due to longer windup/travel time and some bounce issues if multiple enemies near by, but still useful for a few quick succession blinds if it works.

• Blocks/Aegis
  We have a moderatly low cooldown block with the mace, but we also have on demand capability to use Aegis. The only other profession that really makes use of aegis is the mesmer, and that is on a random boon basis for the most part. Aegis has 45-60 cooldown on shout and a 30-40 cooldown on virtue depending on traits.

Some additional secondary effects that can be gained from aegis to passively activate on removal, but not very high priority on the threat/utility list. Still it is worth noting as something that we “excel” in.

This was a quick list, but what else do you guys think we “excel” at?

Update 8/4/2013

I think an overall summation of the one thing guardians do better than other professions is to apply boons to groups. We can focus on 100% protection, might, regeneration, retaliation, or even swiftness to allies around us.

The biggest problem is that we can not do that simultaneously and the other professions are able to make due without those boons up 100% of the time.

Our most beneficial addition to a group is typically protection in pve or retaliation in pvp. Regeneration and stability come in at a second most wanted boon from the guardian.

After that we are there for group condition cleansing and projectile blocks.

Is this role defining enough? when I put it that way it seems kind of meh to me.

How can we play to our strengths and become better as an individual? More often than not you may hear, if you want “x” go play “y” class. Normally you heard that if people wanted to bunker, but some of these posts are indicating that we are losing ground on that as well.

I like to keep tabs on all the professions to help my understanding of the game and my opponents, so I am somewhat familiar with the broken things with engineers such as that scope trait and the lack of meaningful reason to obtain a legendary because of that hobo pack, to name two of the higher vis ones I had seen in the past.

I just tested the weapon swap sigils on my engineer because I was almost certain I read somewhere that they didn’t work, but as you said, it does activate. Maybe the ICD confused the older post that I had read about it, or they got fixed.

I didn’t test the elementalists though, but that defeats the point of my counter argument that “it would be ok”.

This is something I would like to see, but unsure of how to address it due to the points you brought up.

For engineers it would never work because your utility items are often the kits (i.e. the weapon swaps themselves), so you already have variety. Now if that is utilized is another issue like you said, as you will often stay in that one kit save for a few moments here and there.

Elementalists on the other hand swap attunements and utilities stay the same, yet if they were given a utility swap for each attunement they would have access to far too many abilities.

I think my best answer would be provide the “weapon swap” button to initiate a “utility swap” regardless of profession, so that engineers and elementlists could swap utilities every 9-10 seconds as the same as other professions could swap weapons/utilities.

Attunements are changed by default with the f1-4 keys, and engineer kits are on the utility bars (default 7-9). Initiating a utility swap for engineers would clear out any turrets or kits they may have equipped though, and put them in the new setup.

Now the question is, if that is an acceptable solution, would heals and elites be allowed for utility swaps as well? I want to say yes, unless there is a good counter argument for that.

(and np on rant, that just means you are passionate about your profession )

Immobilize, daze, fear, knock down, and weakness (endurance limiter) are the counter play to dodge.

More depth for sure could be added, but it is not shallow per say. I would like to see them do more with what they have though, and pull away from stats and more to skills and timing.

Right now it is kind of a hybrid of classic stat based mmo and an action game. So it feels like the weaker of both.

Very good point on the ele and engineers. I do think it could be too powerful to have access to that many utilities with the amount of “weapon swaps” they have. Although, I don’t think sigils that provide effects on weapon swap count for either of those professions, so they already “get the shaft” in that sense.

Give and take I guess, with the access to tons of “weapons”, they don’t have as many utilities?

It really is, I think they built around valor first and everything else kind of just fit in random places.

I agree that the zeal traits seem mushed into there with “extras”, so that you get the non synergy of symbols and non symbol abilities that waste parts of the trait line.

Downed state traits do feel like a total waste, and gimicky. If they created an actual advantage then I could see them being used, but as it is now, it is not enough and should be removed or reworked.

I have a love/hate with spirit weapons. I see what they are for, but with the addition of HP and the short duration, they are “mostly” not worth it. Best ones would be hammer and shield for the utility they bring….also sword is broken atm.

Zealot’s speed used to give swiftness WAY back in the day I am told, which makes sense as a survival/escape ability. Why it was changed to retaliation I have NO idea, pretty useless at the moment.

Along the same lines, Protector’s Impact is standard enough with on fall reduction, but I think Regeneration would make more sense to help us survive a fall and recover more quickly from it. Stability would be interesting to get everyone to stand up from a “stun” more quickly.

I think our on burn traits in general are all “interesting” but not there yet. I did see one interesting semi-synergy with Shattered Aegis and Searing Flames in that they are close to cool down with each other, so it could be used as a passive boon removal. 20 seconds is too long to be useful, maybe have it remove 2-3 boons every 20 seconds?

Overall thanks for the break down Bash, and yes it may do nothing, or it may inspire more changes. I’m all for analysis and discussion so I encourage more posts like this!

Not really inline with the topic of the post being about on crit condition application.

As far as for burning secondary effects, I always thought a trait that reduced damage done by burning targets would be interesting. That is inline with the defensive aspect of the Guardian, adds group utility/support, and makes prolonged burning more meaningful, than passive damage.

Lots of posts about build diversity and lack there of, or shallow combat.

Would having your utilities swap with weapon swapping create more build diversity?

This would happen the same way as if you were to go into the water, and your utilities change. You could pick the same exact utilities for each weapon set, or you could have a set of utilities that emphasize that weapons abilities.

The only problem I see is that longer cool down abilities currently override the cool down of others on the skill bar when coming out of the water. So they would have to set it so that abilities are put on separate cool downs, so that you could swap between weapon sets and not have all your abilities on cool down.

I think this idea has been brought up before, but throwing it back into the mix a few months down the line to see if it sparks new interest.

What would you guys think of some sort of “consume fire stacks to cause damage” effect. Like activating VoJ would wipe all the burning off a target but cause the damage it “would” do to activate instantly.

Long cool down, possible burst to expedite our potential damage with burning. This would change it to direct damage though, and be prone to blocks and blinds and mitigation of armor/protection.

Not really condition damage, but a play on the mechanics we have, sort of makes it a mesmer shatter in a ways.

Throwing 2 cents in, just tested them all with various spirit weapon traits selected or not selected as well as being in or out of combat.

All of them work, except for sword, as pointed out.

/bug report in game from me and good job on catching this one TheBluel.

I kind of look at them in an offensive/defensive way.

in zeal you have offensive oriented symbol traits
in honor you have defensive oriented symbol traits

If you want to break it up even more, then we have utility traits for symbol in larger symbols, longer symbols, symbol when falling, symbol on low health (can be offensive because retal and damage ticks, or defensive if using symbols heal).

offensive has vulnerability symbols and more damage symbols.

defensive has symbols cause healing.

I guess you could argue that vulnerability is a utility trait which would change it to 5 utilities, 1 offensive, and 1 defensive trait for symbols.

For the most part I undervalue symbols though, since they are not strong enough to pressure enemies nor defensive enough to protect allies.

The best symbol utilization would be with hammer and mace since they are persistent and frequent.

Staff and Greatsword can create some nice little burst, but mostly used for the boons they provide and combo fields.

Wrong, I like condition damage. What I noticed is every class has a condition damage on crit synergy but us.

So was looking to see what the community thought about that fact.

Best counter argument I heard so far is that radiance favors 1h and sword procs lots of burning based off multi hit, so we sort of have a condition damage weapon in 1h sword.

It isn’t a direct on crit style condition damage thing, but it sort of makes sense I guess.

I was just looking for avenues to advocate on crit utilization since we get precision and condition damage together in that tree.

What we do have with on crit synergy are boons and healing/dodging.

So if precision and healing power or precision and boon duration were together, that would make more sense for our profession. But what would that break/hinder if that change were made.

So bottom line: I “want” condition damage, but I want to use it better with the synergies that they are providing us at the moment.

I am really warming on the idea of on crit torment for guardians, even if restricted to sword or some select weapons.

I guess I understand your concerns then GSSBlunaspike. Each of those classes do go through a series of nerfs, but the builds are not dead.

The mechanics are still there, but the impact is lessened so that they are not overpowering. Having a bunker with condition damage was apparently an initial intent with the class since they put burn on block in the traits, but it never really reached fruition.

We do need more diversity, and I think condition builds are the thing we are missing, but it needs to be introduced in not an overpowering way.

Offensive and defensive hybrid of condition damage would be great, and we are sort of at a cross roads to achieve that with how well we sustain at the moment and the new introduction of power to condition damage traits.

I think foofad has his finger on the pulse right now and has described the actions of the devs fairly well.

As far as mobility, if you use greatsword/sword/JI/swiftness (staff or shouts), then you have fairly decent mobility.

I found greatsword and staff work well for moving quickly with the swiftness and the leap of faith on fairly quick cooldowns. Add some boon duration on it and you have perma swiftness.

Greek I think? for hidden.

like meta words (hidden words) meta data (hidden data).

So meta game is pretty much “hidden” game. the bigger picture, or the game behind the game. All the stuff going on in the back ground that equates to what is going on now.

It is used here mostly to describe “how the game is currently played now”. Or what the popular set up is now.

Here are the more offical meanings if you want:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Meta
http://dictionary.reference.com/browse/meta-
http://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/meta (click on the one that says “meta-”)

Why would giving a third build have to make the others suffer?

You can’t have all 3 builds at the same time, so by going down one build set up you would sacrifice the benefits of the other build sets.

Now with the stat spread and how close they are, I do agree that some balancing could be made to change stat placement and provide more diversity.

Also, what is wrong with a condition burst spec, or a bunker condtion set up? Engineer, mesmer, elementalist, and necromancers have some interesting options of being hard to kill while having counter pressure with conditions.

As mentioned earlier, the new necro setup has a strong direct damage and condition damage pressure to provide offensive burst. I am not proficient at all the professions, but I try to keep tabs on them in general so I understand what I am fighting.

Even warriors, who arguably were horrible in spvp have a useful condition set up with the longbow, direct damage burst set up with greatsword or axes, and a bunker set up with hammer and I think it was banners and shouts?

Engineers started off as sort of bunker setups with turrets and lots of healing, and have moved to a mobile hard to kill but provide a lot of condition pressure with HGH.

Mesmers have a shatter direct damage build, condition via illusions and scepter I think, build and all the while difficult to lock down because of the mobility, which is not “bunker” per say, but they can make it difficult to claim a point while still doing damage.

Hard to kill elementalists are with conditions already well known, and they also have bursty direct damage set ups as well as is seen on the forums lately.

I am sure there are exceptions to all the examples and somewhere that will prove me wrong, but I just think that guardians should advance more than just the majority of bunker/support and a few burst direct damage guardians here and there.

Condition is the only thing we don’t have, but that is where the meta is right now, so we are at odds with the current meta. That doesn’t mean we can’t play in the current game, but we have to do it differently.

edit:

Rangers do have a fairly strong condition set up, and the new spirit build I have been seeing has strong condition pressure, while still being mobile and hard to kill. Not bunkery per say but can put out damage and stay alive for a bit.

I don’t think anyone anywhere in this thread didn’t say guardians were not strong.

We are trying to help grow the guardian and open new avenues, but again you are only thinking along one aspect of the situation.

I am not asking for raw damage and condition damage. I am not asking for full defense and full offense, I am not saying guardians suck, I am not saying guardians can only run AH, I am not saying bunker guardian is the only way to go.

But you insist on thinking those are the things I am saying.

Very true, changing what we have now may ruin currently working builds. I guess that is why some are against changes.

I don’t know the best way to save current builds while introducing new mechanics unfortunately, but I would hope new changes would all be beneficial and not negative.

lol bash, my bad.

I don’t know the right direction, and I’m open to all ideas to spark brain storming and maybe the devs will start thinking along the same lines, if they are not already.

Hybrid, yes, which suggest a reduction somewhere to gain a little bit of everything but not all of everything.

So a sacrifice somewhere to gain viable condition usage, but not play into the fears of some of the above posters of making us OP damage demons that have it all. I don’t know if I agree with them on how amazing and OP it would be, as most people like to post “guardian is fine, move on”.

edit: lol np foofad

The idea was to promote a precision/condition damage set up to give us a sort of “condition” build, which would have to be insacrifice of power or crit damage to not give us pow/pre/critD AND viable condD.

I understand your concerns, but you are thinking in one direction and twisting everything to that one corner.

I want to make a meaningful mechanic out of what we have that is currently a dead end, which is Precision and Condition Damage linked together.

edit:

Your post poped up after my quick response foofad, but I whole heartedly agree with a lot of your post.

They are trying to find a way to give us condition damage, but it isn’t there yet. Due to in part the fact that we have one condition, and also that our abilities are not supporting the power/conD as well as necros did.

Zeal/Virtues has an amazing synergy, but it doesn’t seem viable enough yet.

So the question is, what is missing. You pointed out we are lacking condition damage with that combination, but what else could be done if that is not the applicable answer?

Anything is an option. I think sword has decent mobility already due to the fast refresh on flashing blades, so limiting torment (if it is torment we are wanting) to sword is kind of restrictive.

What about 3 second of torment for each application of burning.

If we activate VoJ we only get 3 seconds of torment since that is 1 burn application.

If we let VoJ proc and we do multi hit attacks we can get higher stacks of torment.

That is why I was suggesting a “on crit” effect to give guardians the same stat synergy with precision and condition damage that other classes have.

It could be a 60% chance on crit to cause 3 seconds of torment.

Numbers I’m sure can be adjusted to be more optimal but not OP. Would it be a major or a minor trait? Maybe remove Spirit weapons cause burning and replace it with this new conditions on crit trait.

All “what if’s” aside, what I would like to see as a true solution to the stat issue at the core of the idea is to give us a reliable condition on crit to take advantage of the tree as it is now.

What condition, is the issue. More burning? Bleed? Torment? Poison?

Bleed or torment would be the most damaging solution, but do we need it?

Poison would cause more capability to kill other bunker classes, so a more strategic condition, but it doesn’t take advantage of condition damage as much.

Burning is already plentiful, and I just don’t see it as advantageous.

Thoughts?

Actually that is pretty insightful as to why the trait lines may have these stats. Everything might have been based off of the idea of defensive offense, via Altruistic Healing.

AH is in the Valor line which gives Toughness/Crit damage

Now you can build a defensive or offensive build based off of AH. Want damage, up power and precision to supplement the crit damage you already have. Want defense, up healing power and vitality to supplement the toughness you have.

I just hate how centralized a lot of our builds are on AH. A healing power build works perfectly fine, but now you have to ensure that you have a steady flow of regeneration, which forces us into shouts and the Honor line.

But you go down there and you are already setting the path to a defensive build as you ditched out most likely 30 points down the tree to maximize healing power and shouts, so if you want offensive stats you can only choose between power, precision, or crit damage…but not all 3.

I would argue a lot of precision can be made up with gear, and pick power/crit damage at that rate. Crit damage is something that is difficult to not get if you want damage…but you still need that power or the crit damage still isn’t enough.

My break down of the stat synergies on the general forum got ignore…but here it is if anyone wanted to look at it and explore our stat/trait lines more in comparison to the other professions.

It creates a lot of questions as to why we are the way we are I think.

https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/game/gw2/Problem-With-Stats-on-Gear-and-Trait-Lines/first#post2524941

Very good point, and needs some clarification.

The amazing aspect of guardians is the ability to delay the cap of a point and give allies time to arrive to support that point, and then the guardian makes it so the arriving allies can burst a target that is locked down with chains of light and return a lot of AE damage via group retaliation.

Additionally if you are using staff you are giving 12 might to the allies near you and keeping them ahead on life with ae healing via regeneration and even possibly symbols depending on your build.

Guardians are not damage in terms of solo bunkering, but the control and support you provide is amazing.

Gaurdians are still great bunkers, but if you plan to solo bunker and never need team mates to come help, then you are not utilizing the abilities to the fullest.

Other professions can do solo damage and bunker better, but we can bunker and help win big team fights at highly contested points better. After we claim it we can hold it long enough to get allies back in and again win the big team fight.

I hope I am speaking along the same lines as Jax is and not too far off point, because he has a great list of pvp setups, to include bunker builds and map specific strategies. If you haven’t seen it, go check it out.

I do still think the meta is starting to evolve past Guardian as the “best” bunker, and there are some teams where it becomes situational. Players are figuring out how to lock down and pressure the Guardian bunker a lot better now than the did before.

Something that is universal with all profession trait lines is that Power is always combined with Condition Duration. I don’t know why….

That said, I don’t think they would move condition damage into power any time soon.

I think condition damage and toughness would be a good combination, since burning requires time to do damage, and toughness prolongs time. Also down the valor line you have might and burn on block….while we don’t have a frequent enough rate of blocking to make it the core of a build, that synergy works well.

At that rate crit damage could move up to precision and complete that P/Prc/CritD trinity…but they moved crit damage away from precision for a reason, so I don’t think they would be keen on that move either.

Condition damage could also go with healing power, since if we go down the honor tree we may be lacking in power and precision, which would give us some defensive damage via retaliation and burning.

Just some thoughts as we play “dev”.

First off, I’ll be honest. I worded in a way to spark some conversation.

I do not think “radiance is bad”. There are tons of reasons to go down that tree, pve and pvp reasons.

I think Bash’s list is VERY comprehensive and has tons of good insight.

The core idea that prompted me to do this was when I was compiling a list of traits and stats from every profession in the game and I came to realize we are the only ones that don’t have a condition damage on crit effect. (I don’t count hammer chill condition damage).

Every other class has bleed/burn/vulnerability on crit if not more effects.

Would burning on crit be a satisfactory addition? The only other on conditions that would gain benefit from condition damage would be bleeding, torment, and poison….I guess you can throw in confusion as well, but I REALLY don’t think that is a condition that guardians need or should have…I’m on the wall about giving us bleed.

Poison also I don’t think is a condition we need, but torment is a viable on crit condition we could gain.

Additionally they added torment in small bits here and there and advanced that to giving Warriors torment in the last patch I think it was? or it was changed, something about torment and warriors happened…too lazy to go look it up right now.

That said, if they are expanding torment to more classes as they test and adjust things, we may be on the list to gain a new condition in torment as well, I hope.

I actually went running around in spvp with runes of earth on my weapons and I tried either maximizing bleeding duration (85% to bleed duration I think I got) or maximizing my crit chance (90+%). Both of them I could only maintain about 3-4 stacks of bleed, but the bleed duration provided the most stable 4 stack bleed which would drop to 3 only for a couple of seconds.

It wasn’t enough though, but bleeding+burning did augment each other fairly well, just wasn’t enough pressure or survivability to maintain. Maybe I didn’t have the build right, because I was just testing the mechanics, not really trying to find a build.

Torment on crit, thoughts?

If you read a little closer I was trying to indicate that the stat spread was bad, and not trying to discount the trait selections within the trees which add utilities which are actually good.

CMF.5461:

Beyond taking radiance for the obvious benefit of precision and a few traits of choice, it has horrible synergy because it gives us condition damage.

By going down that tree we gain precision but lose out on power and crit damage and vice versa for the others. Versus a profession that gets crit damage and precision in the same tree.

Zeal does its job as far as trait selection (all damage) but it seems to focus on symbols too much.

It is a bland trait line for sure, but it satisfies its role at ramping up your raw damage.

Our offensive stat setup is flimsy and spread thin.

High precision and crit damage do nothing without good power.

High power is never going to achieve the heavy hits without good precision crit damage.

Full P/Pr/CritD makes us more glass than other classes because of a lack of survival traits in those trees and extremely low HP.

Arguably PvE can survive without those survival traits though, but for arguments sake, it is not very pretty on paper.

Have a big long post in the general forums about all the trait line stat synergies, and I just wanted to come back to my chosen profession and throw it out there:

Radiance has bad stat synergies.

Beyond taking radiance for the obvious benefit of precision and a few traits of choice, it has horrible synergy because it gives us condition damage.

Ours is the only class that suffers from a lack of meaningful conditions on crit.

At most we get a 5 second Chill on crit every 30 seconds when using hammer….but that does not do condition damage, more so, condition duration would assist that to try to scrape together as long of a chill as possible.

So we have condition damage and precision which help each other none, and force us to throw away a stat since we can only get 4 stats maxed out with a 30/30/10 setup.

If you take radiance to max out precision, then you would want crit damage and power as well.

But crit damage is with toughness in valor and power is in zeal with condition duration.

So we would have to pick which stat we want to have suffer. You can make up for a lot of lost precision with gear, but it is harder to make up lost power and crit damage with gear, thus radiance may be the one you choose to sacrifice.

(not that we are seeking condition damage for now)
If you go down radiance for the condition damage, you get precision, but no condition on crits. If you go down power you have “some” synergy by having power convert to condition damage and you also gain condition duration.

so we can max condition damage and condition duration, but it is seemingly pointless without any survivability traits as burning takes a long time to ramp up damage and it is easy to cleanse.

So I am just throwing it out there, our stat synergies are wonky.

compare the damage you do with other bunker specs such as engineer bunkers or elementalists if they bunker.

Our biggest pressure is via someone killing themselves on retaliation.

12 stacks of might is going to take your “giant damaging symbol” that did 1570 damage every 15 seconds up to something around 1950 damage. That is 390 damage for 5 ticks, which is auto attacking with no gear.

Purging flames is best as utility to cleanse conditions. You do not have any condition damage augmenting your burning damage, and condition damage has proven time and time again to not be worth it on guardians anyway.

Now going back to the group wide comment, 12 stacks of might with allies near by IS a game changer which will allow your group to push out that much more damage versus the other group.

That is why I said Guardians are better team fight players than solo bunkering in some aspects of the meta.

You show me the last time someone was afraid of being killed by a bunker guardian and I don’t mean a rogue or warrior spamming attacks while you have retal on…they deserve to die.

Actually one of the original bunker builds save for the new healing power with mace trait which didn’t exists originally.

I would almost suggest moving 10 points out of valor and down into virtues and getting absolute resolution for more healing per second and condition cleanse.

Altruistic Healing will get you more burst healing with staff if you are around other team mates, but if you are bunkering a spot alone, then you may want a more constant flow with virtue of resolve ticks.

Either setup works though, but I think the meta is evolving past none damaging Guardian bunkers and more to bunkers than can cause some counter pressure as well.

Guardians are excelling in team fights more than solo bunkering because of the group retaliation.

TLDR:
Do the stats in the trait lines and stats available on gear need to be re-evaluated and changed?

I want to start this post by stating that I acknowledge and agree that stats are not everything, and that skill makes up for a majority of how a character is played.

But stats are what define what our characters can do, so we can only skillfully perform within the parameters of our stats.

Additionally I also understand that there are more synergies within the train lines that accommodate for a lack of some of the optimal stats and create more interesting game play that is more than just numbers alone.

That said:

The stats in GW2 have been explained to have a sort of trinity of synergy intertwined between them.

The Offensive Combination is Power/Precision/Critical Damage, which is the most notable stat combination that provides the most observable and understood increase in our characters.

Yet, each professions trait lines differ slightly in the combinations of each of these stats, which leads way to some professions being “better” than others (from a stat standpoint, not factoring in the mechanics and utilities).

Professions that combine critical damage and precision together will be able to maximize the benefits of direct damage, since they only need to go down two trait lines to achieve the most gain.

30 points down power/condition duration and 30 points down precision/critical damage, and now you can set yourself apart from other professions also wearing power/precision/critical damage gear, as you have a higher set of stats than they do.

Most notably the professions that can do so are: Elementalist, Ranger, Thief, and Mesmer.

The Defensive Combination consists of Toughness/Healing Power/Vitality, which is the other well known and understood stat combination.

Every profession is able to 30/30 down the trees to gain maximum stats in this spread except for the Ranger.

The Utility Combination is the only one that differs from the idea of a trinity of stats and prioritizes Boon Duration and maybe the Profession Specific trait lines. Although it can be paired with Precision for on crit effects such as vigor, might, or profession specific things such as initiative or life force on crit effects.

The Condition Combination which is Condition Duration/Condition Damage and in many cases Precision, based off of on crit effects is the last stat combination.

Of all the professions, only two lack in the condition on crit effects. The Guardian has chill for 5 seconds when critting with hammer every 30 seconds and Mesmers which have a 50% chance to daze and illusions cause bleeding (but they have a lot of conditions on block and interrupt effects which make up for it).

With all that said, gear is also a limiting factor in gaining the optimal stat combinations. The defensive combo does not have any gear that supports all three stats on one piece. Condition duration and boon duration are also not regular stats on gear, which limit players to trait line only in many cases, forcing them down that tree and what ever paired stat it has for that profession.

Also, why is Power always paired with Condition Duration?

So the bottom line is, some professions excel more than others based off of trait line synergies with the stats and some gear excels more than others because of the combinations of stats on the gear are optimal to the stat synergies. Is this a problem or should it be fixed? Does this create diversity like it was intended? Or does it just muddy up the waters and cause confusion, and ultimately just get ignored because they are “useless”.

edit: shamelessly removed the (long) out of title to try to not ward off potential readers…
:p

An equipslot would be a good solution, which could have a “show/hide” toggle like helm,gloves,shoulders on the equipment window.

Devs have stated before they understand the issue, but suggest using invisible bags to prevent minis from being banked…I don’t think that is a good final solution but that is where they left it off at.

IVIUIEI.9631:

Thats why u exit first then open your loots

I mentioned that and stated that is a work around and not a fix, and crimsony posted a link where they acknowledged the problem and have a fix in mind…..

So not a helpful solution but doesn’t matter anyway cause it should be remedied.

I think the whole combo system in general needs a overhaul honestly.

Some of the combos are seemingly pointless and most of the time it is mindless and secondary to what we do.

Combos should be purposeful and powerful when used correctly.

Kind of an offshoot idea, I always thought there should be a sort of chaining system to smartly combine multiple attacks into a flow that would give a bonus.

Like leap of faith and symbol of wrath mid air causes a small ae knock down, or something to that effect.

Banish and Mighty blow cause an upper cut and mid air hit to knock down instead of away.

I actually noticed this last night when I was speeding through the first couple of levels on an alt. I knew the story and path and I just wanted out! “click click click…..loot in way….click click click”.

My work around was to open the loot bags “AFTER” zoning out…but that is a work around and not a fix.

Either make it so you can get to the exit instance button through the loot, or move the loot list up higher above that icon.

What is your opinion on addition of WvW Levels and perks? What could they do to make WvW better?