Guild Wars 2

Good point krixis, metas exist for a reason.

The reason is that intelligent people were able to theory craft and derive meaning through multiple choices and figure out what skills/traits/classes are most effective.

What happened is exactly what you described. From GW1 there were hundreds of skills, which many were unused. So for GW2 they stated they limited the skill selection by weapons, to ease the development process and balance.

A few years down the line they again ease the development process and try to streamline balance.

We traded diversity and possibilities of new metas, for a diluted and “easier” time for the developers and/or people who don’t want to be confused by choices.

Is that a positive or a negative? For me a negative, for others it seems a positive.

You guys are arguing that the new trait system is good because the traits themselves are better.

We are arguing that the new trait system is bad, because it limits your ability to mix different trait lines together.

I feel the two arguments are not matching up or discussing the same point.

If only 3 or 4 of them are viable, then we have some options.

a) re-evaluate those skills, make adjustments and look for ways to make them more dynamic and applicable in more combinations.

b) throw everything else away

Also there is a sort of “mini-game” for some players who enjoy the idea of “failure”. By that I mean, the ability to wisely understand the synergy between each skill and figure out how to combine them in effective and powerful ways. After you create a build (theory craft) and when you try it, it turns out to work well, you feel a sense of pride and achievement. You created something and you stake claim to your build and feel unique and more invested in your character.

TLDR
Right now, the sense of investment in the game has been removed for some players because the impact of their decisions has been reduced or removed.

http://dictionary.reference.com/browse/meta?s=t

meta-
1.
a prefix appearing in loanwords from Greek, with the meanings “after,” “along with,” “beyond,” “among,” “behind,” and productive in English on the Greek model:
metacarpus; metagenesis.
2.
a prefix added to the name of a subject and designating another subject that analyzes the original one but at a more abstract, higher level:
metaphilosophy; metalinguistics.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Meta

Meta (from the Greek preposition and prefix meta- (????-) meaning “after”, or “beyond”) is a prefix used in English to indicate a concept which is an abstraction from another concept, used to complete or add to the latter.

In Greek, the prefix meta- is generally less esoteric than in English; Greek meta- is equivalent to the Latin words post- or ad-. The use of the prefix in this sense occurs occasionally in scientific English terms derived from Greek. For example: the term Metatheria (the name for the clade of marsupial mammals) uses the prefix meta- merely in the sense that the Metatheria occur on the tree of life adjacent to the Theria (the placental mammals).

Words like metaphysical talk about abstract deeper meaning and behind the scenes knowledge

Metamorphosis is how the change occurs on an internal and completely structural level as opposed to simply morphosis which are the steps and sequences of change.

Metadata is the information behind the viewable result on the end user side that make up the whole.

Meta is mostly hidden, behind information of the greater workings of a whole.

TLDR:
In terms of video game “metas” it is a breakdown of how the game mechanically functions to the point of complete control and deeper understanding, which allows players to “win” based on numbers and rules and less on skill.

So if a skill changes cooldown and becomes better to use over other skills, the “meta” has changed, because what is “right” has changed.

and yes, players (and devs) use the word meta far too much and sometimes in the wrong instance.

I have to agree with this one. Miss your burst and you are out of luck, otherwise there is no counter play to backstab if it can just be spammed till it lands.

I’m sure someone could explain otherwise, expecting an adverse response actually.

Personally I wanted to keep the tomes and fix them instead of scrap them. BUT I think that this has potential, but needs tweeking.

Currently the cast time is an understandable risk/reward case on not getting interrupted or getting the heal off. Although when casting it, I feel I"m taking more damage getting the spell off than anything, so if I would have just “NOT” cast it, I would be better off letting it tick passively. So the decision making aspect makes it feel like 90% of the time, your worse off trying to activate the signet.

The passive aspect has great potential to bring us near passive regen like a warrior with Healing Signet and Adrenal Health. We can combine Virtue of Resolve with Signet of Courage (SoC). The numbers are still behind but getting close there. I think the biggest thing that would help SoC work better would be to shorten the tick time to 3 seconds and reduce the healing per tick appropriatly.

Right now they have it ticking at 900ish, and it seems cool to get near 1k life every 10 seconds, but waiting for that 10th second can be a death sentance. Other similar traits/skills/utilities tick on a 1 second interval or a 3-5 second interval. 10 seconds is an exceedingly long time.

In essence SoC is about 90 health per second (HPS). VoR is also around 90 HPS, putting us roughly around 180 HPS. Off the top of my head I think warrior HPS with signet and trait is close to 250.

So I think to make this new signet more viable the passive should occur more frequently (3-5 second ticks) have increased base heal (bring it up to 150 HPS?).

For the active I feel there needs to be a negative after casting instead of during casting for risk/reward. Right now you take far more damage trying to channel the full heal. Channel time at maybe 2 seconds and self stun on after cast possibly?

If smite was a symbol, it would hit at a controlled 1 sec per tick rate, and at most get 5 ticks out of it untraited.

Currently smite is good/bad, because it has such a fast cooldown time for a fairly high rate of damage….but the damage is random and on average only 8 of the 16 “strikes” will actually hit. Additionally they can only hit one target, so any more than one target in smite effect and you diminish your damage potential, cause they can distribute it between a whole.

I am fine with smite not being a symbol, as long as all 16 orb reliably hit targets (atm only giant boss targets seem to take full damage), and the scepter trait would provide piercing for smite orbs, allowing it to work better in AoE.

Excuse me while I sterotype generic class comments :p

Necromancer – “You think thats bad? What about necro!”

Guardian – “In a good place? Throw us a bone or something!”

Warrior – “We are not that strong, buffs pls!”

Mesmer – (silently stands in shadows to avoid nerfs)

Thief – “we are forced to disengage a lot, l2p we need buffs”

Elementalist – “we can do everything, but we have to push so many buttons #skillcap”

Ranger – “Yeah we can do damage, but really we still suck and die easy..more mobility pls”

Engineer – “l2p, it’s not that hard to beat us really”

(didn’t really have anything for ele or mesmer, make up your own!)

Oh good, meaningful “gamebalance” discussion tucked away back into the guardian forum where better understanding to the playerbase as a whole will never happen and instead we get to pat ourselves on the backs and shake hands and agree with our own class based bias……..

(had a more in depth post but forum ate it, so here is the shortened version)

Here is a list of arbitrary traits that could meet the “really it’s a minor?!” criteria you applied. In a vacuum they seem like they are fairly strong, but in effect I am sure the players of these classes can tell you that with cooldowns and actual returns, each of these traits are byproduct and forgettable to some degree.

If anything, Might of the Protector differed from these below traits because you could use it to greater or lesser degree of effectiveness, which made the trait not great by default, but useful by a skilled player.

http://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Phantasmal_Healing
http://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Shattered_Strength
http://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Automated_Medical_Response
http://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Steel-Packed_Powder
http://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Feline_Grace
http://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Hidden_Assassin
http://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Siphoned_Power
http://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Companion%27s_Defense
http://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Adrenal_Health

Beyond that, you have to remove the constraints in your head that these are “minor traits” now and move into a new paradigm of perception.

With the new “6/6/6” build constraints, we can no longer specify the distribution of points and simply just select trait lines as a whole. This new renders “minor traits” as simply “trait line defining attributes”. These minor traits are not greater or weaker than any other trait, but simply your selected class mechanics you wish to play with.

Your flavor is now gained with the select able traits per each tier, and the minor traits help enhance and emphasize your play style.

Yes, I think 10 stack sof might when you block a multi hit flury attack like flamethrower is ok.

Retaliation is not BS and typically does less incoming damage than you do outgoing damage, save for group fight scenarios. The main offender of retaliation is it should have a much shorter uptime and in compensation it should do increased damage done to work like a skillful counter play and not a fire and forget boon attached to EVERYTHING guardians do.

Most guards will tell you that they don’t see retaliation as “a guard thing”. Mostly a byproduct of what I feel is a forced and failed class mechanic with bandaid solutions to make it “cool to have”.

In addition, retaliation is “not” guardian specific and other classes can provide retal as well.

Back to Might of the Protector. Typically a Guardian can chain single block attacks up to about 5-6 times every 45ish seconds on average (focus, “retreat!”, VoC). Under the old rule, that would provide about 5 stacks of might for 15 seconds each (enough for saving your offensive cooldowns while you play defensive and then return 1 or 2 “buffed” attacks). I see this as fine because guardian is supposed to be a defensive oriented player, so you reward/compensate defensive play with some return damage.

Shelter tied with Might of the Protector was a prime example of good counter play. It is the “worst” heal, yet it is the “best” utility that guards have. Smart use of shelter during a coordinated burst attack by attacking players will provide the guard 10+ stacks of might (20+ if being attacked by multiple targets). Typically it still only provides 1-2 stacks of might on an uncoordinated attack.

This was fine under the old trait, because it rewarded the guardian for smart counter play, with a 30 second cooldown, or it rewarded the attackers if they were able to force shelter without blowing cooldowns into a block and ended up punishing the guard.

Using shelter for a “heal” will get you killed, but using shelter for damage mitigation will reward you.

Overall I think the Might of the Protector was “in a good place” before the changes, and now it is laughably forgettable.

The key here for those that “don’t get it” is don’t mindlessly attack into a block or mindlessly AE into a cluster of enemies!. Watch your opponents, look for retal/blocks and adjust fire. It is supposed to be active combat with counter play, not spam your buttons harder gameplay.

Unfortunately we keep getting more and more changes diluting and disrupting thoughtful gameplay)

Having shield provide “perma” perma protection much like hammer can do would be ideal, yet viewed as overpowered. So a compromise I would suggest is that shield has a trait that reduces damage taken while protection is active by +/- 33% (on top of the 33% from protection boon) for 66% damage reduction.

This would only be while shield is equipped and traited, so as to now allow hammer to be perma 66% damage reduction.

This way shield could act as “active defense” by popping shield 4 at incoming burst damage, with down time before it is ready again. A “soft block” in ways, which reduces incoming damage.

Also shield 4 could be usable while stunned maybe, a faster cast animation. There is a pause between casting it and activation. This way it can be used “actively” instead of fire and forget as it is now, since timing is off on it.

Shield 5 could be given a blast finisher OR a water field (not both).

And that, Tarsius, brings up a key problem on a couple of fronts.

Karl had no idea how the class worked and was shocked to see the results. Then we possibly got"adjustments" from an uneducated knee jerk reaction.

The devs should not be surprised at what they made and should understand the synergies of the class. Both where it works too well and where it does not work at all. Feels like they are trying to force/encourage usage of lesser utilized skills in an enclosed vacuum, and calling that balance.

Puts the last 3 years into perspective.

(I have tried to speak on what I saw as design intent before, will repeat here)
I feel the guardian shield’s “supposed” strength is the damage mitigation and not negation.

I’ll elaborate, warrior and engineer shield both work on two different ends of the spectrum.

The warrior shield operates at a more hard stop on damage with physical blocking.

The engineer shield operates more as a CC device that focuses on ranged blocking/reflecting.

Come back full circle, the guardian shield seems to want to be the middle ground between engineer and warrior with both CC/ranged protection/damage mitigation.

So the idea on how the guardian shield “blocks” damage is via protection boon. We are supposed to take “less” damage on demand (not negate damage), as well as the ability to pushback/heal/block projectiles.

I feel the lapse in effectiveness is the short duration of protection and inequality of ranged defense with wall of reflection.

Cooldown reductions help fill the ranged projectile blocking some, but that is only half the picture. Higher uptime of protection with longer durations of the boon will bring the shield to where it is seemingly “supposed” to be.

Yet there is an adversity on the devs side to give us a ready supply of protection, outside of hammer. So much so, they nerf the duration of shield protection in pvp.

With the low life pool and the emphasis on boons for guardians, you would think the natural idea would be to let us flourish in boons, but they keep them away from us. Balance is one thing, but being at odds with the class mechanics is another.

Silhouette.5631:

The Meta Is Changing At An Alarming Rate O.O!

That rate is approximately at 30-20 seconds of ineffectiveness apparently.

As dumb as it might sound, I think we need a “group huddle” with devs AND players (driven by the devs) that explain to us the road forward.

There is a huge disconnect on what we are given and what we tend to want.

That can vary vastly, but overall it seems like curveballs which are aimed at being creative and not low hanging fruit, but it gets convoluted at times.

This was done a long time ago within the first year of release, but I think it is valid to reapproach it. As with any development project, there needs to be regular meetings where everyone can recalibrate and come back to a balance point to stay on track. Possibly we as the community our way off track with who is driving this train (the devs) and if we had a clear message on what you want the Guardian class to achieve, we can better understand and accept the changes that do (or do not) get made.

I think this disconnect is understood by the development team because they recognized the guardian changes were received badly, the guardian specialization overall was received badly, and the handling of the class over the last 3? years? is concluding in negative feelings by longterm players.

This recognition is seen by having devs like Josh run over here to do crowd control as we get upset and they try to throw us a bone with even more shield cooldown reductions.

thoughts?

Silhouette.5631:

So yeah lets start with shield

lol

So was going over the traits in there, was considering avoidance/vigor.

Honor provides the following minor traits:

VoR also increases energy regeneration
Crits provide Vigor

Vigor is dropping to 50% energy regen I believe.

So in essence they do the same thing, unless VoR passive energy regen will now stack with Vigor. Currently I’m under the impression it does not.

At a minimum we can say guardians will always regen energy at a 50% increased rate, regardless on if we have VoR up or not. Kind of pointless to have two traits to accomplish that I feel.

Wasn’t there supposed to be community forum representatives, whose job it was to compile information for ease of ingest for the devs?

Did we ever get one?

Tried to list out all the traits in a visible format so I could see them in one go and make synergy links, thought I would share. Incomplete and just arbitrarily listing a synergy and looking to see what traits match for now.

https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1f8fbj5XmoQtE0157ACXxJFXD5eYFzpfvH2z8EA4B2ks/edit?usp=sharing

Any suggestions or requests welcome.

Good point on the secondary mechanics seeing no benefit to stacking.

The danger, as you listed is in letting things like poison going too high. Then again it encourages “maximum” gameplay by leading players to want “x” amount of poison application to max the reduction in healing. Possibly a road we don’t want to go down.

I suggested variations to mechanics and roles of conditions, to as not to all be simply more damage more stacks, more dots. So I feel you are the one blowing things out of proportions.

There is a fine difference between burning, bleeding, confusion, torment, and poison.

Confusion and poison are readily visible and accepted in terms of mechanical variations of punishing use of skills and punishing reliance on healing.

Torment is somewhat separate than bleeding in the reasoning that it is meant to punish movement (but we can not afford to stop moving, so this becomes a moot point where it is on and we suffer regardless on if we want to play smart and avoid the mechanic or not). I feel this could be amplified more in the terms of mobility and burst application.

Leaving us with burning and bleeding, thus why I make my comparison on lack of role diversity in conditions.

Burning does damage through duration and not intensity. Bleeding does the opposite, where it emphasis intensity and not duration.

So now we change burning to stack in intensity as well (with an expected nerf in damage per stack to compensate for overpoweredness). Now we have two conditions whose role it is to do damage and stack in intensity.

With your admitted example, burning is easy to maintain and bleeding is harder for you. So we just buffed burning and made bleeding even less useful to you.

That is a negative in diversity and defining roles if I ever saw one.

Sure, currently you can stack burning up to 60 seconds, but it will take 60 seconds to see all that damage. Think about things in terms of damage per a second as well as damage over time. Do not be blinded by the big number at the end, and consider the applications of burst.

Bleeding excels over burning in the sense that I can suddenly ramp up the damage per second for short durations and complete “1000” damage in one tick.

Burning will maintain a constant and take 2 or more ticks to see that 1000 damage, yet over time it will contribute to the total damage more than bleeding.

So in a pvp scenario, you have pressure (constant damage) versus burst (sudden damage).

Burst is threatening and unexpected/uncontrollable at times, and it secures a win. Pressure relies on sustain, and it becomes a war of attrition on who has the better sustain paired with pressure.

Combine them all together you have

(Pressure + Sustain) * Burst = Kill
arbitrary formula to show the difference in damage application

If two opposing forces have similar pressure and sustain values, then the one deciding factor is strength and timing of the application of burst. Bursting at the start can put a foe at a disadvantage and win the race. Although, you lose the ability to secure a win at the end and maybe your opponent can recover if your pressure is not strong enough.

Back to the point and your counter argument.

TLDR
I feel there needs to be a separation of roles that conditions do. I am all for widening the field to allow more players to apply conditions via stack caps being adjusted, but I caution against the pending overpoweredness of 50+ stacks of bleeding/burning uncontrollably downing players.

So the mechanics and application of these damaging conditions needs to be re-evaluated. The original intent with burning versus bleeding is seemingly apparent, with burning doing pressure and bleeding doing burst.

That role diversity is being blurred, and I wanted to highlight that point for further review.

Xenon.4537:

These are all very good and valid comments. I just want to nit pick something though. The assertion that all conditions now “compete” with each other because they are too similar is not completely accurate.

Having 10 bleeds and 10 burning is now really similar, true. Whats the point here? What’s the difference? Why not just have 20 bleed or 20 burn? Condition removal is a good reason. Let’s say you cleanse 1 condition with a skill (Smite Condition for example). With the 10/10 split, you still have 10 stacks of something.

Basically what I’m getting at is with a variety of conditions, cleansing them doesn’t wipe them all out entirely (unless it’s a powerful one like Consume Conditions). That’s something at least… I know this doesn’t change the homogenization issue, but I wanted to point out that bit of minutiae.

Pretty good bit of minutiae detail, I’ll be honest. I can’t argue against the need to allow condition damage the ability to persist to some degree past condition removal, otherwise it would be a hard counter to any type of condition damage.

That said, condition removal “should” be reserved for avoidance of burst damage, much in the same way that damage mitigation/avoidance skills should be used to reduce direct damage burst.

Conditions I feel should be mostly ignored and allowed to persist under my scenario would be

• Burning – Easy application, moderate to low damage, equivalent to auto attack
• Blind – Can be expired quickly without need of condition removal, just do not waste big skills with it active
• Confusion – Avoid attacking, let it expire unless imminent death or win is present

Conditions I feel should be immediately removed

• Bleeding – High stacks of bleeding would equate to burst damage, so cutting the stacks in half or completely removing them would be equivalent to blocking or avoiding huge direct damage burst.
• Immobilize – Damage setup with both direct damage and conditions is easy to recognize when you get singled out and immobilized, so quick removal of this is key
• Poison – In the event you need to heal, poison is high priority, so counter play would be in recognizing when poison is on cooldown and when it is safe to heal (should not be easy to keep reapplying poison)
• Vulnerability – With the change to vulnerability applying to conditions as well, recognizing high stacks of this is crucial to remove in fear of burst damage

Conditions that should be mindfully removed per situation requirements

• Chill – This should hinder ability cooldown to a greater degree, to help control the availability offensive and defensive cooldowns by attackers. I would envision this to have long duration and increase cooldowns by a multiplier of 2 unless cleared (to include auto attack). The movement reduction should be removed. In this scenario sometimes it is fine to let a cooldown take longer, sometimes you need it right away and you should condi clear it
• Cripple – This should be the primary form of soft mobility CC. Condi clear should be dependent on if you need to chase or if you need to run. Sometimes you can let it persist. Moderate to low uptime of this condition with moderate to high cooldown would be ideal
• Fear – Loss of control of your character for short durations becomes situation based. Do you need to get back in the fight right away or can you wait?
• Torment – A secondary way of doing mobility soft CC by giving the afflicted a choice, move and take the damage, stay still, or condi clear it based on stacks?
• Weakness – Defensive condition, so the afflicted needs to decide if they are about to do big burst or not and they want to clear the condition.

TLDR:
They key here is that conditions are “conditional”. There are varying scenarios and needs which they should create and ebb and flow of decision making, and not just mindlessly spamming application and removal.

Right now I feel conditions are mostly mindless. This new reform in conditions is making them even more mindless, I feel. So I wanted to voice a different opinion is all.

I agree a change needed to be made, not saying remove the stack limit at all.

allowing multiple people to stack conditions is good and helps them all contribute damage instead of being dropped off by stack limits.

By Epidemic shenanigans I assume you mean bleed stacking scenario I described, only an issue for pvp/wvw honestly, but what is the compromise. Limited pve usage with stack caps or overpowered in pvp without stack caps.

My intent was the give each condition a role. I felt they were clearly defined roles of long duration low damage, short duration high damage, and minute variations in between them.

If that was too complicated to understand, then I guess you don’t see a problem with everything basically becoming a different form of bleed damage which stacks in intensity.

Again, I honestly don’t expect any real change to be made based on my comments. I only hope that they spark future thought for developers should they read it, or even carry over into other games and developments. I enjoy the game and want to contribute, so I offer input. Regardless on if it is taken or not, I want to offer what I can and maybe it turns out to be helpful.

I know they already programmed the changes to stacking, but I feel they could have kept the 25 stack limit with simple adjustments to the condition concept as I tried to describe.

What if bleeding only stacked in intensity but only refreshed in duration and not stacked (additional applications would reset the timer back to “5” seconds, but never go higher than 5 seconds?). Mechanically how we apply bleeding would have to be adjusted, but it was be a designated short duration condition burst.

While torment could stack in duration and intensity, to let it differentiate a bit from bleeding, besides the all ignored movement penalty.

Burning could stack in duration but not in intensity as it is now, but it would excel in long applications for constant damage. Currently bleeding can persist for long periods of time AND maintain moderate to high stacks, making it TOO powerful over all the other conditions.

Poison I feel it pretty spot on, maybe shorter duration, so it isn’t so easy to maintain perma poison, if anything.

Confusion is again readily admitted to excel in one game type and under perform in the rest. I don’t like the proposed idea that it will do DoT damage, but I don’t have a great solution for it either. The low hanging fruit would be the PvE/PvP split, and greatly enhance the duration for PvE, so it could maintain for say….10 seconds at maximum? PvP it would maintain short duration of 2-3 seconds.

By shortening the duration of intensity stacking boons, you avoid the prospect of 700 stacks of bleeding on a target, while maintaining all the players are able to put out their own condition damage without the threat of others overwriting them.

I am not looking forward to group condition applications in PvP/WvW where I suddenly have 50 stacks of bleeding all ticking for 700 damage each on me and I’m taking 35,000 damage a second……….. condition stack limits needed to be there for pvp, pve it needed a solution to make it viable. This new change makes it sound like it will be ridiculous in pvp.

Again, I know too little too late, but maybe a dev will see this and consider it in the future.

I think the proposed changes to stacking are a long awaited thing that we were constantly told was impossible due to increased bandwidth usages. The vehement arguments about that aside, the additional changes to burning and confusion are blurring the lines between the usage of each condition too much.

Each condition should have a specified role and use, making burning stack makes it compete against bleeding now. Having confusions do DOT damage, also puts it in contention against bleeding.

Below is a rough break down of how I would have liked conditions (and boons) to interact:

Damage/Mechanics
Bleeding -> Short Duration, high burst
Burning -> Long Duration, moderate damage
Poison -> Long Duration, negate healing
Torment -> Moderate Duration, moderate damage / high on mechanic
Confusion -> Moderate Duration, high damage on mechanic

(some of the boon conversions get iffy, but room for adjustments)
Conversion Chart
Bleeding —-————- Regeneration*1
Blindness —-———— Aegis
Burning —-————— Might
Chill —-—————— Retaliation
Confusion —-———— Fury
Cripple ——————- Swiftness
Fear —-——————- Stability*3
Immobilize —-———- Vigor*2
Poison —-—————- Regeneration*1
Torment —-————— Stability*3
Vulnerability —-—— Protection
Weakness —-————- Vigor*2

So for example:

Bleeding should be difficult to maintain constant stacks, but with proper setup, you can provide large burst damage(think cooldowns for direct damage).

Burning should be fairly easy to maintain and threatening enough to compete with auto attack.

Poison excels in it’s secondary mechanic to counter healing worked well and remains mostly unchanged I believe.

Torment currently competes with bleeding, but I feel it should could better break from the pack if it had easier to maintain stacks, which punished mobility. Maybe something like multiplies damage to moving targets by number of stacks. That way a constant 1 stack will do low damage, but lined up with 2 or more it can excel up to/past bleeding with proper setup.

Confusion was good and bad. PvE it was horrible, PvP it was great. It was also the sort of counter part of Retaliation. Retal punished fast low damaging attacks (typically flury style hits from single skill use) while Confusion punished slow heavy hitting attacks (such as multi skill activation of cooldowns). Making this useful in PvE could be provided by adding a mechanic that forced mobs to spin in place and attack while stationary, regardless if it was in range to attack a player or not. This would initiate more “auto attacks” from mobs to help proc confusion more. Also making it easier to maintain stacks in PvE would be beneficial.

As far as condition conversions to boons, I always thought it would be intuitive if you applied a boon it would negate the effect of the boons for the duration of the pair being up (not cleanse it, just negate negative effects to zero positive and zero negative).

Also boon conversions seemed a bit wonky to me, so suggested some based on how I felt the mechanics worked. Retal/stability/vigor had a hard time fitting in, but kind of shoe horned them in where I thought they worked mechanically.

Overall, long post, wasted effort. But wanted to voice an opinion is all :p

oxtred.7658:

Gear-checking 99 players would be a pain, though.

Well….the “idea” is there isn’t a gear check but a skill check, and any gear can pass.

That said I acknowledge that dps is king still, as it shortens fights reduces incoming damage/room for error.

Previous examples made by others in the post highly favor positioning and damage windows pushing phases, not necessarily dps races against timers.

Hopfully more mechanics based fights come into play which emphasize knowledge and skill versus dps, allowing for more build diversity. There will always be an “optimal” setup of course, but lessen the hard line if possible would be nice.

That said, I personally am not in favor of 100+ man dungeons. Too zergy and chaotic I feel. We get enough of the zerg ball effect in wvw. A 10-20 man dungeon would be maybe favorable to give the perception of raid type content for those who miss it’s presence.

I have tended to avoid large group content because I hate other’s failures hindering my performance, but I understand the attraction of teamwork success and the camaraderie it brings.

I feel we are mentally biased into using meditations or altruistic healing for survival. The burst healing on both is nice, but the sustain healing may or may not be there in truth.

So I had a small build challenge, run without AH or MF for a week and see if you need it!

If we do, then that may or may not be a crutch, or just nature of build diversity (similar in all classes, getting stuck down a specific line, not too horrible). If we don’t then expand a bit and try new things

While I don’t see it coming into play in this environment. I enjoy the idea and it is interesting.

The problem is, over time players will learn the dungeon and all 100 players will survive. What then? Will the rewards and encounter scale upwards and be more difficult? Our current reward system is lacking carrot and stick, so it would have to be an increased chance at unique armor/weapon skin, or hard to find materials.

What do the players that die off do? The fun factor disappears for the losers in that encounter. I personally see that as a goal to overcome and get better at the next time around.

Should the dungeon have a retry time limit, for say once a week? We probably don’t want people redoing the dungeon right after they win/lose it right away. It would take away the meaning off loss in that sense.

This idea is very akin to the idea of the original Sword Art Online, where the whole community was trying to reach the 100th floor (or something) and there was perma death so all their people kept slowly dying off and getting weaker. I am intrigued by the challenge.

I’ll start by saying it is insufficient compared to other things you can do, such as building for damage with gs/hammer/scepter scenarios.

What Symbol of Faith can do is provide an on demand near 100% up time symbol (hammer requires auto attack) to land.

With an on demand 100% up time symbols you can:

• Maintain a steady stream of boon application (good for AH healing procs)
• Maintain vulnerability stacks enemies
• Utilize layered healing with Regeneration ticks/Writ of Merciful ticks/Virtue of Resolve ticks getting up into the 800-900 health per tick with all 3 combined.
• Layer damaging symbols for upward of 1k damage per tick when building for damage (2 symbols 1k+ each for 5 ticks = ~10k damage to 5 possible targets) [if they stay in it…big if].
• Mind game against opponents, since people tend to stay out of red circles (area control via ground effects).

All of the above sounds great, but what you sacrifice to achieve or the net effectiveness of trying to get allies and/or opponents to stand in the symbol is unreliable and self defeatist.

In practice it is not as great, but on paper it sounds pretty cool. I think some symbol buffs could be warranted. In the expansion, we may see symbol damage become threatening with the 20% damage buff…but will it be enough to make them good?

In the past staff and mace were the more reliable bunker weapons, due to application of boons and AH procs. Your mileage in bunkering will vary now a days, but still useful in the right scenarios.

Well I avoided the initial rush at the dislike of the name, as I have greater issues with the direction the specialization took the class and could care less about aesthetics and more about functions.

With that said!

Lets take a step back from the name and the class and re-evaluate an evolution or change in paradigms.

Guardians are traditionally more defensive and highly synonymous with a shield (represented more so with Aegis than the actual equipment).

Dragonbane was an attempt to transition Guardians into a more active pursuit and bringing the idea of taking the fight to the enemy instead of defending our friends.

So if Guardian is to Shield then Dragonbane is to Sword (defense and offense).

Back to the name now:

The new specialization is an attempt to fill in the gaps that guardians had, which were: Ranged combat, mobility, soft CC.

We obtained ranged combat through the long bow
Mobility is provided by an additional leap with Wings of Resolve
Soft CC is seen with cripples on the bow and traps

All of these are traditionally “hunter” styled combat, but we agree at the dislike of the hunter idea, but how can we name it as an aggressive offense oriented attacker?

Thematic Guardian attributes are: Light, Justice, Fire, Faith, Resolve, Virtue, Courage

These are all very traditional knightly/paladin archetype terms.

Zealot is a direct translation into someone more aggressively pursuing an idea or faith, yet it is uninspiring and has some negative connotation associated with it. So what are some other affiliated words with Zealot (offensive guardian).

Heading to the thesaurus I have a few options but one stands out to me:

Crusader

I personally like Crusader in a single term title. This fits in the offensive/bring the fight to the enemy/faith oriented/light bringer.

In the end though, ANet is not known for backing down from decisions, and I see no measurable success in advocating a name change. Yet this is all for fun here.

https://www.guildwars2.com/en/news/lions-arch-construction-nears-completion-new-player-poll-announced/

Also the poll is located here:

https://www.surveymonkey.com/s/5B7WMBF

Don’t have the energy to go into long in depth posts like I usually do, but wanted to voice I agree with Dom and Arnath on this one. Besides the “wow it’s new” factor everyone else is raving about, I’m not mechanically seeing the advantages.

It will be effective and probably entertaining enough to play, but we will have to see it for ourselves in the long run. Right now my opinion is low though.

……solved
https://youtu.be/3boy_tLWeqA

Was theory crafting with the proposed new talents and had an epiphany moment.

What if Shattered Aegis placed a symbol on the ground instead of doing AoE damage?

Combined with Communal Defense it would have to be balanced I’m sure, cause omg symbol spam for days in WvW?

Still I think it could have potential for some trait synergy and Aegis/Symbol play. The Shattered Aegis symbol could do damage and cripple or blind targets for another step of synergy.

For the sake of answering the OP.

Modern military (more than just Army…btw Navy, Marines, Air Force) limits it’s own capabilities as a means to protect non-combatants. Go back to Cold War era mind-sets, we were on the edge of global destruction because of threat of intercontinental ballistic missiles. These do not have to be nuclear, but at that time it was current threat.

Today we do everything we can to discourage the use and proliferation of ICBMs and mindlessly tossing weapons at each other from the “safety” of each countries borders for fear of retaliation and arms races picking up again.

Drones/UAVs have limited payloads and weight capabilities, so do not expect mass mayhem from a bunch of tiny missiles or dumb bombs. Those are used for precision strikes to soft targets, not typically against large and fortified defenses. Or they are used for surveillance and reconnaissance and overwatch for friendly forces. Of course without air superiority, all those UAVs are worthless as they are slow and will be taken down with ease.

Without self imposed restrictions, a modern military can wage wars without ever leaving home or putting itself in harms way (unless the opponent can also fire back with similar weapons….which is where we are today).

So in terms of fighting Mordremoth, a modern military could feasibly rain destruction from a distance and cause meaningful damage to the target. In regards to mordremoth being underground, there are capabilities of ground penetration to certain depths, but this could be a barrier in total destruction and provide a stalemate.

The question is what are the critical nodes that maintain mordremoth’s combat capabilities? Direct attack or indirect attack are both options, so by crippling the ability to fight you can feasibly win the war.

We could force mordremoth into submission/retreat at the least. In terms of nuclear/chemical/biological agents, there are plenty options that could be used, but again at what cost? An area can remain inhospitable for years after exposure.

We also could track seismic movement and maintain generalized locations of mordremoth in anticipation of a resurfacing. At most we can clear an area and wait for it to pop it’s head up and unload more force on it, in hopes of debilitating it or forcing it back down.

[soapbox]
As horrible or glamours as people try to make war and military’s, most of us in the military recognize we are big dangerous giants who are trying our best to refrain from hurting anyone while preventing more dangerous and deadly adversaries from acting freely. The day that killing without thought becomes fun, is the day we need to stop and re-evaluate ourselves. War is about protection, not about killing.
[/soapbox]

You are thinking in traditional terms in a non-traditional game. Given that avoidance and active defense are infinitely superior to “tanking”, there are no currently built tanks in the game. It is possible to build tanky, but the return is so little and the damage output drops drastically, your fear of a cheetah/truck is unreasonable.

Currently we are in a scenario where everyone either has strong ranged options and/or can maintain a high degree of mobility in combat. Either by runspeed, evades, teleports, combat breakers.

Guardians, necromancers, and mesmers are the advertised “least” mobile the last I heard. Necromancers maintain a high degree of target mobility control to maintain combat range. Mesmers have invis/clone mechanics/evades to stay highly mobile in combat.

Guardians have 3 sources of immobilizes, two of which are unreliable or impractical to take (hammer/signet). We also have a chill trait which is insufficient to maintain combat, and a tome that cripples, but tomes are another issue all together and apparently going away.

Our best mobility is a combination of sword/great sword and JI. Yet after you close the gap, it is reopened by the high mobility/evasion of opposing classes. Which goes back to the want/need of soft CCs or more in combat mobility.

This may be a moot point now with the inclusion of long bow and traps…but this is all to be determined after expansion release so we await tentatively.

Dark Saviour.9410:

Thatkitten Rat.1236:

Given that Mordremoth seems to be mostly underground,

So… the turned Sylvari are hipsters. <_<

Best post ever, I need more +1’s

Maybe I should stop trying, judging by the trend of changes and the overall feedback of my peers, but these new ideas seem weaker than current tome capabilities.

What they are doing is stripping off what was seen as unused and trying to streamline the tomes to perform without a transformation.

ToC will lose it’s burst heal potential and daze.

ToW will lose it’s burst ranged aoe damage potential and knockdown.

The secondary skills on both tomes (2 and 3 skills) were underused because of such little return and clunky mechanics (bounce mechanics on affliction and purifying ribbon are suboptimal, and suffers targeting los and aiming issues much like focus ray of judgement).

We are gaining a slower more persistent heal (augment of VoR? just make VoR stronger if we need it then!). Also we are gaining a streamlined quickness and another source of fury.

Quickness across the board is under utilized after launch nerf because it was too strong apparently. Fury and crit chance is far from an issue on guardians, so these are unneeded and will augment our ability little to none in my eyes.

Many are just excited that guardians are getting attention finally after long bouts of neglect. New is not better!

The new proposed elites are weaker than current options, and do not solve the problem of Renewed Focus being so instrumental in survival/support/virtue mechanics that it is the top choice.

I fear we are championing this change because we know current tomes are insufficient and accepting a lemon in return

xDudisx.5914:

Making tomes into a signet and one shout is the best idea ever. Will turn 2 useless skills into solid options for guardians.

Will they be solid options? I have a strong feeling that these two new abilities will still be insufficient in terms of survival/utility to take over renewed focus.

Still waiting on the numbers of the proposed skills, but Heal Area will put out more healing in burst quantity than a 10 second ticking heal signet will. They are trying to encourage signet usage which we never ever ever take. So nerfing an under utilized elite and trying to promote signets in one swift movement, yet it is ultimately a nerf in team support.

Tome of Courage Confagrate will push out more damage to a group on a specified point than we will gain from fury/quickness from a shout. We are not in a drastic need of critical chance or fury. Quickness will likely be in short duration (3-5 seconds?).

Both of these new proposed tome replacements are nice sounding but ultimately nerfs to a potential ability we have with current tomes.

The issue is that the tomes did not provide enough reward for the risks. Renewed Focused is seen kitten instrumental in our survival that anything else is a huge sacrifice.

I personally have seen great use of tomes in wvw, and some clutch moments in spvp. PvE they are almost never used.

Making tomes MORE accessible I think is the answer to making them good, not scrapping them and trying to put out a diluted version of them in a shout and signet.

Vizardlorde.8243:

CMF.5461:

Vizardlorde.8243:

Courage I can see people wanting to keep it wrath,not so much. Conflagrate did less damage than symbol of wrath + whirling wrath in the same time frame to multiple targets. Zealots fervor was the only reason to use tome of wrath when mesmers were not around and a shout makes it better than the tome. binding blade, wards, heck even shelter make better AoE CC not taking into account the new DH AoE CC.

Agreed, which is why I propose to increase damage or number of targets on Conflagrate. By increasing damage it is an easy fix to make it threatening. and/or increasing number of targets helps its use in large fight situations (wvw). Less damage per target but more damage done to a whole group.

Tome of Wrath was one of our few ranged targetable aoe skills that could be useful to keep opponents off a point in sPvP or keep doing damage from a wall in WvW. It just needs a boost to make it more worthwhile.

Now we dont need it because we have a bow not on a 3 minute cooldown and these elites do not criple us by locking out our class mechanic or our utilities.

Well, the question is can the bow with a 15s cooldown ranged symbol and a 60s cooldown ranged trap, put out as much damage to a group as tome of wrath can with conflagrate in 20 seconds of tome duration up every 180s cooldown?

Also keep in mind burst versus dps.

I think making the tomes more accessible would have gone a long way into making them more useful. They were clunky and too little used to become crucial in common gameplay.

BUT

There are moments when they shine, we needed to make those moments of opportunity occur more often and I think tomes in their current inception would be more popular. Shorter tome cooldowns may have provided that, or increasing healing/damage potential while they are active could prove to do the same thing of increasing risk vs reward.

Should have done a poll on what people play as their main, this one is a biased poll on perception of individuals.

Vizardlorde.8243:

Courage I can see people wanting to keep it wrath,not so much. Conflagrate did less damage than symbol of wrath + whirling wrath in the same time frame to multiple targets. Zealots fervor was the only reason to use tome of wrath when mesmers were not around and a shout makes it better than the tome. binding blade, wards, heck even shelter make better AoE CC not taking into account the new DH AoE CC.

Agreed, which is why I propose to increase damage or number of targets on Conflagrate. By increasing damage it is an easy fix to make it threatening. and/or increasing number of targets helps its use in large fight situations (wvw). Less damage per target but more damage done to a whole group.

Tome of Wrath was one of our few ranged targetable aoe skills that could be useful to keep opponents off a point in sPvP or keep doing damage from a wall in WvW. It just needs a boost to make it more worthwhile.

More alternate tome ideas to help preserve them but increase “want” to use them.

Tome of Courage:
Purifying Light: 600 range / 5 second channel / 1 second pulses / mobile while channeling / 10s cooldown: Emit bright light that blinds opponents and clears conditions from allies up to 10 targets.

Symbol of Truth: 180 radius / 4 second duration / 1 second pulses / 20s cooldown: Place a symbol on the ground that converts all damage into healing for allies for up to 5 targets (conditions and CCs still apply full effect).

Tome of Wrath:
Cry of Justice: 600 range / 5 second channel / 20s cooldown / mobile while channeling: Allies in range have 20% increased damage for the duration of channel, up to 5 targets.

Flames of Judgement: 600 range / 5s cooldown: Up to 10 enemy targets have all conditions converted to burning based on casters condition damage.

I have to voice AGAINST the change unfortunately.

I do not use tomes, but when I do I do not use tomes for the proposed changes they have.

Currently tome mechanics favor the usage of spamming 1 for both tomes.

Tome of Courage you were provided with a significant group heal that could be layered with multiple guardians with high effects in WvW and moderate effect in sPvP. Open world boss PvE it was moderate to low usage.

The remaining skills on the Tome transition were forgettable except for that enticing AoE “full” heal, but it took some setup to use without getting interrupted (risk vs reward).

The blind/protection/condition removal/regen boon were less noticeable in effect and often used at the expense of casting the spamable heal or full heal. The AoE daze did have some clutch usage, and was a welcome tool set on the tome.

By changing the tome of courage into a signet we lose a daze and a controlled spamable heal to fight against spamable attacks by opposing groups.

Tome of Wrath also so its primary use by spamming 1 and raining direct damage and condition damage on an opposing group. The haste and AoE knock down were flashy and could be clutch, but at the end of the day, being able to control an area with consistent damage on a point was the reason to take the tome if any.

The weakness/cripple/might/swiftness are laughable and ignored much as the utility effects on tome of courage were.

So changing Tome of Wrath into a shout we lose the ability to put damage pressure on a point and aoe control via knock down.

The two bolded lines saying what we lose are the only reason, I feel anyone takes the tomes and they were useful, but not useful enough reasons when paired against the losses in effect you had from losing your weapon set and utility skills for having tomes active.

TLDR:
I think a buff to tomes with maintaining the primary heal/damage ability of the tomes would help keep them unique enough and clutch enough in a fight would be more beneficial than watering down the skills to a shout and signet.

Shorter cooldowns? Longer durations? Higher damage/heal numbers? I am not in favor of taking them away, even though I don’t use them, I see the potential and we would lose that potential if they are removed and changed.

For the sake of input/output.

Guardians have been lacking in:
- Ranged attacks
- Soft CCs
- Mobility
- Condition builds (some may argue)

Devs tried to provide Guardians with
- Long Bow
- Immobilizes
- Another leap
- Modified burning mechanics

So they met each disparity with a response, just not the way we expected. Does it make it wrong? I don’t know yet.

While we got thrown a bone, I want to reiterate that the devs are careful to reveal too much information about diminishing returns, because they don’t want bot runners to figure out the system and work around it.

Also be realistic, they are not going to run through and tell everyone what their DR is individually, but John posted here to make a point, not customer service a single person.

(linking blog post/video for others if they don’t realize where to look)
https://www.guildwars2.com/en/news/meet-the-dragonhunter-guardians-elite-specialization/

REALLY good analysis of the video, and I was going to do the same thing but you beat me to it.

Another thing I noted was the blind had a crossed sword graphic on it, I don’t remember off the top of my head but I’m under the impression blind was just dark smoke clouds on the targets face. I was unable to find other images or videos detailing a blind which is similar to what was used. So secondary effect possibly, or I just never noticed it before.

Good catch on the burst of flame ring on the trap shot, I wanted to mention that as well.

So
1) Single target auto attack
2) Single target blind
3) Frontal projectile destruction line attack
4) Targeted AOE trap/fire condition
5) Targeted multi hit AOE, immobilize trap

In addition to the virtue changes mentioned in yours and the blog posts. Good job again.

Oh and, thank you for caring more about mechanics and less about a name :p

I’m still shocked at how upset people get over a name and appearances. It’s like being mad that you get a red car for a present and you wanted a blue car instead. Its a free car?!?! Who cares what color it is?

The name has no impact on how the class works and plays….form before function for some I guess?

I would rather gameplay and mechanics be evaluated before a simple name that has no effect on how the class/spec plays.