Guild Wars 2

Five things that prevent me from being convinced condi guard is as good as you say:

Burn on Block
Aegis and protector’s strike are the primary “repetitive” blocks, with a long cooldown between burns (15s and upwards of 30+ if you use retreat). This will only net you about 2-4s of burning on a target doing maybe 2k dmg every 15 seconds. Shelter can provide a lot of burns, but then you are left without a defensive cooldown/heal

Radius of Permeating Wrath
240 range from the player restricts a lot of potential burn effects, especially when a majority of opponents in pvp are ranged (engi, ranger, mesmer, necro) Even ele and thiefs kite in and out and will not be in melee too long. This leaves warriors and other guardians who will melee you.

This is saved “somewhat” by point defense needing people to stand on a point, but often it is ranged aoe that wins that point not standing inside of it.

Torch to Burn Targets
If torch is used as a primary way to burn instead of VoJ/Permeating wrath, it can only burn 3 targets at a time. This is not horrible, but it limits your aoe potential. Also has a radius of 180, even worse than permeating wrath. Better burn duration than blocks and VOJ though.

Survival to see Burns
Guardian’s use blinds more so than blocks to survive damage as they have more of that available. After that they rely on a lot of dodging. Without crits you lose out on vigor. This can be made up for with energy sigils and/or intellect sigils. After that they rely on self healing either via meditations or AH if near allies.

If you do not have precision or 6 down valor, then you lose out on survival. But now you lose 6 points that you could use for virtues and zeal.

so now your burning build either does aoe burns but at regular damage, or you do single target burns at 33% extra damage. (I wish they would make both more accessible maybe like 4/0/6/0/4 and you could have permeating wrath and amplified wrath achievable)

Time to burn
This comes up time and time again, but there is no burst with burning. So a direct damage build can front load damage and get a kill, while a burning build needs time. The more time you give an opponent, the more time they have to either heal through your damage or kill you before you can finish your damage.

It was already shown that while condi builds can do as much as zerker builds theoretically. It will always be “12 seconds” behind. (another post showed how much burning damage they could do with whirling wrath stacking 12 seconds of burning, but in 12 seconds you could get a second whirling wrath off and doing double the original burning damage)

I “WANT” a burning/condi build to work and I keep theorycrafting them and testing them out, but they are not ready yet.

So for a proof of concept I went in some unrated pvp testing a 100% burning focused build.

http://gw2skills.net/editor/?fVAQRApd8flsApcoNDxSI8DNR8QZdH8CpQ1BQC8oXNDA-TJhAABws/A0PBgxKDAwJBAA

Not trying to be effective, just seeing what burning can do.

1002 burning per tick in game (although from build calc it should be 1008?)

Not relying on passive VoJ for burns, but more on aoe on skills. Torch, JI, and Purging Flames.

Utilized blocks and blinds on sword/mace to delay damage and let burns tick.

The pressure is noticeable, there was not enough condition cleans by opponents to keep up. Damage ticks took huge chunks out of their life.

Downside, yeah I was able to down a lot of people left and right due to passive burning, I was squishy and downed as well. Not a total failure as I was just trying to see if burning could do decent damage.

Other downside, is since my damage is slow (15-20 seconds to get a kill) my lack of sustain ability was highlighted even more. There is no burst. With allies I can keep pressure up, but just like our bunker spec, it works best with allies near by. Just like our damage specs, it works best with allies near by…everything works best with allies around. The curse of the guardians.

1v1 maybe it is fun, group play, it adds some pressure at the sacrifice of EVERYTHING.

The other crux of the guardian class. If you want damage, you give up defense, if you want defense you give up damage, if you want conditions you give up both.

I think condition guardian could be better solved by better management of our trait synergy and putting them a tier or two down in various trees.

Hell, why do we even have Kindled Zeal anymore, that trait lasted maybe a month and they upgraded to Amplified Wrath. Trash Kindled Zeal and reorg our traits pls.

TLDR
Sacrifice everything to gain good burns, not ready for mass play until trait lines get cleaned up.

DaShi.1368:

Bunker guardians. Mostly because I’d rather have engineer or another ele. Bunker guardians just don’t seem to have the sustain they once did.

Bunker guard has changed little to none over the last couple of years. Sustain is pretty much exactly the same. If that tells you anything about the class.

So, gonna dig into the math more:

I am deducting that you tested with a build that provides 2 seconds of burning per application based on the Leap of Faith numbers providing 1,122 burning after hitting 5 targets.

So 1,122 / 2 = 561 damage per burn tick.

Based on that, to see the full potential of Whirling Wrath burning damage you need to wait 12 seconds.

6732 / 561 = 12 seconds

Whirling Wrath has a cooldown of 10 seconds.

So if we are to take your zerker medi build numbers and double them to show two possible rotations in 12 seconds (duration of burning) we get:

Whirling Wrath – 47,390 Total Damage Dealt
Whirl Dmg: 41,270
Average Whirl Damage per person: 8,254
Burn damage average: 340
Burn Damage: 6,120
Total Damage: 47,390

So:
42,444 (burn build) vs. 47,390 (medi build) in 12 seconds

Actually, the numbers are pleasingly close to provide an “alternative”. Although, if the fight has less than 5 targets, the burn build suffers in damage potential.

You can double the burning build numbers too, but it will always be another 12 second after, which gives the medi build time to do another whirling wrath (always 1 rotation ahead).

So zerker medi does more damage in less time IF you land all the damage.

BUT condi guard requires hits to land burning as well (VoJ) so it still misses out on the potential damage on blocks/blinds/dodges.

The biggest argument is after application, the sustain of damage after initial burst keeps life down allowing for another rotation of burst, but that is fight/player dependent.

dat mouse wheel dou

4k burst in 8 seconds on a 72 second cooldown feels really ineffective to me.

True point on mad king vs retaliation though. I have been running it all last night and I haven’t been wrecked by retal…yet…but it is a plausible scenario and may steer me away from it now. The AoE burning was really nice though.

Without mad king, I will now move away from virtues, as it was the only thing that had good synergy with permeating wrath.

I have had a good deal of success (even in team fights) with geomancy and doom for swap sigils. So the elite usage is not pinnacle to the play style, but I feel poison/bleed in ties with burning is.

I personally have been running medi zerker with mace/fc (or torch) and GS. had 2/0/6/0/6 with permeating wrath and supreme justice, but I will consider moving that now.

Biggest change from meta meditation build and this is honestly just the weapon sigils allowing for some anti kiting and reduction in enemy healing with poison.

Also I was running a symbol burst build utilizing overlapping symbols from mace and gs, 5/0/4/5/0. This would do about 13-18k burst on targets in the symbol….downside, the good players would avoid the symbol and just range you or kite you. It would randomly burst unaware people down in group fights though.

So I am continuing to do that with a medi build, but seeing if this condition hybrid can integrate in to fill the gap I have with symbols being ignored.

Back to the point, I feel krait is not as effective as you say it is, and we can find something better. Maybe not mad king though, because retal “is” a threat. Burning duration is not as critical, but something power based or something that provides a gap in defense.

I really feel rune of krait is not optimal.

25% chance to bleed on being hit only stacks 1 bleed for 10 seconds (every 15), so you are only getting 1 extra proc.

the on elite effect provides torment and one bleed again, as well as poison. Torment was shown to not be highly effective, but bleed and poison were good contributors, so I would suggest on swap sigils: doom and geomancy

those would provide the bleeding and poison needed. (poison only being single target, but that is fine because you are focus firing to prevent heals)

As far as what rune to use instead of geomancy, something that increases bleed duration while still being hybrid/power based.

Rune of the Mad King seems interesting.

power: 25/50/100
Condition Duration: 5%
Bleeding Duration 15/20% (total of 40% bleeding duration increase)

On elite use: summon ravens to attack enemies nearby. This does about 17 strikes doing about 70-90 damage and can crit. The bonus is it can proc burning from VoJ and is based on your stats power and precision stats (does hunters call skill). Large range too, about 600+.

Combine that with permeating wrath and you have a good aoe burn on elite…downside is you have to drop either amplified wrath or monk’s focus….probably amplified wrath at that rate.

This may be gimicky, but it seems interesting.

I actually like the alternative ideas you came up with. They have compromise and limits, while making the trait more useful in pvp.

The best I have seen this trait is when fighting karka and removing retaliation and regeneration to make for easier pve fights. Other than that, it remains unused.

Holl.3109:

@CMF.5461: THANK YOU SO MUCH for the time you put into that! must have taken a while. Surprised direct damage still came out on top O-o, and that bleeding did so little damage :/ Might switch the build around knowing this…

The thing is, in all your fights it was primarily burning and direct damage, but on your fight against the mesmer at mid point, the bleeding ended up being good pressure and one of the reasons you kept him low on life.

Also your second fight with the ranger, conditions came out on top, and direct damage became supplemental.

I am reluctant to call these condi builds a success, “yet”, but one thing to take note is that pretty much half your damage done is via conditions.

So the question is, would a pure direct damage build make up in raw damage what your build does with condition damage?

Are the two styles of fighting equivalent, or is one “better” than the other. The biggest advantage I did see was that, while being kited or evaded, your conditions continued to do damage (the second half of your damage). This kind of alleviates the low mobility issue that gets guards killed.

The Baws.5164:

I really don’t think you understand Engineer or have played the class very much.

Firstly, a Guardian can keep people occupied for much longer. Due to a few reasons, one key one however is access to stability. Engineers have incredibly little to no stability and thus simply get cc’d off a point or get stunned and blown up by a Thief. Guardians also have access to Aegis, block on heal, spam/aoe blind, all of which most Engineer builds do not have access to.

Secondly, the Engineer rifle 3 is blunderbuss. I believe you are referring to the rifle 4 which is Overcharged shot. The range on this ability is so incredibly low you have no idea, it is pretty much a point black shot and that’s it. It also knocks back the Engineer themselves, making them vulnerable to, again, Thieves and Warriors etc.

Engineers also do not cure conditions like elementalists do, in fact, Engineers have some of the lowest if not the lowest condition cleanse in the entire game. The healing turret’s overcharged burst clears 2 condis every 20 seconds if the turret is detonated. The elixir gun clears 1. That is all of the condi clear the popular engi builds at the moment have.

If you want to make points about a class, please at least attempt to understand that class. Engineer is strong at the moment for sure, but it is not without its weaknesses which you seem to believe it is.

True fact on stability, one of the better things Guardian’s bring.

Inaccurate statement on the guardian aoe blind spam. A bunker guardian typically is not running GS/SwFc, so they do not have the blind spam that a medi guard utilizes. They “may” have VoJ blind trait every 25-30 seconds depending on traits.

Healing block is pretty powerful, and weak at the same time.
It has one of the longest cooldown durations and low heal output.
While it has huge damage avoidance potential though, IF used against burst abilities, persistent damage via conditions defeats the strength of shelter due to the low healing output.

Aegis is a block or two every 32-ish seconds on Retreat and 75-90 seconds on VoC.

That is about 2% aegis uptime.

I don’t presume to know Engineer builds too much, but with Gadgeteer, an engini can get Aegis every 18-ish seconds when using throw mine.

Also Armor Mods gives them Aegis every 15 seconds when being struck.

Those two traits provide higher Aegis uptime. Somewhere about 11%.

Blunderbuss is pretty powerful with drawbacks like you said. It is a single target CC that also shortly CCs the engi. The strength is the short duration 15s cooldown and the hard to see warning animation. The short range I think is negligible, as you are fighting on a point and other classes also are limited to a melee range pushback (not counting ranger)

Guardian hammer has a 25s cooldown with a huge visual tell. Warrior are better off here with hammer doing an AoE pushback every 20s.

Condi cleanse on engi is not “terrible”, it is actually pretty modest. The guardian simply has the superior condition cleansing, as they rely on that to live and be viable.

If anything the engi trait Automated Response helps mitigate a lot of conditions as it reduces duration by 50% (under 33% life). This would make things like burning have no effect, and vastly reduce bleed damage.

Is Fumigate self activating as well? Guardian’s have been asking for Cleansing Flame on torch 5 to cure conditions on self as well as allies since launch and before.

Fight Analysis for the first half of video, so we have numbers not flashy songs and videos:

1v1 Guardian (Total Damage – 13,874 / Condition Damage – 6,762 / Duration 8 seconds)

1v1 Ranger (Total Damage – 21,656 / Condition Damage – 11,161 / Duration 22 seconds)

2v1 Engineer (Total Damage – 12,015 / Condition Damage – 5,299 / Duration approximately 20 seconds)

2v1 Mesmer (Total Damage – 18,959 / Condition Damage – 9,487 / Duration 30 seconds)

Could do the rest, but tedious. I hope this lets people better evaluate the performance though.

Edited to show total condition damage done.

For the sake of showing the numbers, I took a build calculator and did some quick math.

Just armor and accessories, no traits, sigils, runes, food. Using staff auto since why not, its all healing gear.

Clerics armor and Clerics accessories – 43,248 damage

Magi armor and Clerics accessories – 36,741 damage (magi accessories don’t exist)

In order of a Magi set to be equivalent to a Cleric set, you need 200% critical damage with a 31% crit chance

Harbinger.8637:

…However, when it comes to small group comp, support Guard is one the best professions to go. Most of the groups success rest solely on the Guard(s).

Goes out to everyone, not just Harbinger, why is the Guard the best profession to go for group encounters.

Does the success of the group really rest on the Guardian that much?

Rough break down of things a Guardian will provide for group encounters:

• 600 range friendly condition cleansing (1200 on a 60s timer with VoR / not including virtue reset with Renewed Focus) approximate 11 conditions cleansed with 3 shouts wearing soldiers and VoR trait for 11% condition cleanse

• 600-1200 range 5 tgt Aegis on 32s traited timer and 69-90s timer depending on virtue traits. Approximate 3 Aegis every 75s on an average build for approximate 4% attacks blocked

• 600 range 12 stack group might with an approximate 65% uptime

• 600 range regeneration boon with about 26% uptime

• 600 range stability boon with about 25% uptime

• If mace approximately 6% of attacks are blocked (1 block per 15 seconds, if you can count it like that)

• If sword/gs you have approximate 17% of attacks blinded (10s and 15s over 60 second calculation. So 4 with GS and 6 with Sw)

• Can include Wall of Reflection for 38% projectile reflect traited.

• Self healing in a group with Altruistic Healing makes for a lot of survival, where enemies should target someone else if they can’t drop you in the first rotation

Outside of that, I believe it is Elementalist that can group heal better, I’ll include Engineer too since the Healing Turret is on fast cooldown with a water blast finisher.

Condition cleansing and group might I would say are things the Guardian brings well.

Engineer can have a pretty good condition cleans with Healing turret and Elixir Gun, but I don’t see them use it that much…so maybe it does not fit into the common builds well.

Other classes are pretty decent at self might stacking, but Guardian with staff can excel in this.

I think a Guardian assists a group by augmenting their ability to keep fighting better through short bursts, but they do not keep a group standing via sustain and healing.

TLDR recap:
Group condition cleanse, group might, and group projectile reflections are the most notable Guardian fortes. Possibly stability as well, but it seem so short in effect. 25% uptime is a good chunk though.

A lot of pages of hate, but just wanted to throw one item out that stood out to me.

Contrary to popular belief, non zerker players don’t necessarily want to face tank and not dodge. Yes it’s true, they want to utilize the game mechanics and avoid big insta kill hits too!

They just want more flexibility in wearing different gear than zerker to feel like they have something their own in a style they enjoy, while still being effective.

anti-meta player assume zerker players are elitist and self centered.

meta players assume anti-meta are unskilled and again self centered.

Everyone is shouting about what they think and not listening to what the other person thinks. It is worse than those “news” talk shows, where everyone has an opinion they are trying to shout out loudest.

BTW, I run meta. Because mechanics at the moment make everything else inferior in pve. There is a meta for wvw and pvp, and it is not always zerker.

I do, however, theory craft a lot to try to find my own flavor of the meta so I can feel like a special snow flake and that I am involved in my character choices.

I think everyone acknowledges that PvE favors zerker stats because of the insta gib mechanics and high health pools of the mobs, while they have simplistic fight patterns.

What frustrates anti-meta players is “why put in all this armor if we are never going to use it?”.

Thank you for the break down, any advice helps a ton.

I’ll try forging the excess runes and sigils and it may pay off, but it also sounds like a bit of rng needs to fall in my favor and/or I need to play more to give more chances at rng.

I think the play more part is my problem, I don’t spent “quality” time in game, and mostly doing spvp and not constantly looting and making profit.

DarkWasp.7291:

LanfearShadowflame.3189:

Everything can be done in blues and greens (Been doing so quite successfully on my ranger until recently, even SW).

Was that you in my last fractals group? :P

---

Anyway, while I agree with the OP’s mindset. (Cosmetics are part of progression, they are a part of gameplay, they are a part of the reason people keep playing the game.) I do not agree that they are beyond reach.

GW2 is a “just go do something” type of game. You want to go do the new zone? Go do it. Was it fun, want to do it again? Go do it again. Got bored after three times? Go do something else. Guild is doing CoF? Tag along. Need a half hour break? Go to Sparkfly to get in a decent Tequatl group. Running across a canyon and you see a jumping puzzle you like? Go jump the puzzle.

I don’t consider that playstyle grinding at all, yet it’s causing me to jump up 40-100g on weekends and zoom in mats toward my next ascended item.

You described pretty much what I do and how I choose to do it, yet I don’t jump 40-100g on weekends or zoom in mats.

So while you are “just doing it”, are you selling EVERYTHING that drops, to include mats? Are you getting exotics that you sell on the trading post? Are you harvesting every node you walk by? How many hours do you play on average on the weekends?

At the end of a JP or opening public event or boss chests, I get mostly greens and maybe an odd yellow. I salvage them and keep the mats, sell the sigil or rune that dropped for maybe 2-5s. I typically open all the materials bags and store the crafting mats that are inside. If I were to clear out my bank, I might have a ton of money, but I keep saving those to make other things in the future. Such as ascended or legendary, which have not happened since launch. The ascended items I do have are from drops or bought with laurels.

Here, I’m a failure story. I have played the game since launch with a break or two in the past six months. At most I think I had 300g, but that involved having excess gems from purchasing things like infinite pick axe or other temporary/seasonal items.

On average I hover around 50g in my pocket. right now I have 20g and it does not move very far.

I do not farm to any huge extent, I salvage everything as I am still farming mats. I upgrade full stacks to higher tiers when capped out on lower level mats.

I salvage yellows for ectos and bank or use them myself and I save exotics to try to mystic forge on the off chance for a precursor.

I have gotten a few random exotic items I was able to sell for short term boosts in gold, but nothing concrete.

I have “tried” to play the market. Flipping I fail at and investing never pays off, so I fail at understanding how to do it….buy low sell high? I use gw2spidy and look at trends, I buy low and sit on things but after a week or two I give up and sell it back to break even or minimize loss.

So I either need to farm for hours and do large community events, or I need to learn how to trading post better….or both

Majority of my time is spent in spvp and theory crafting builds.

Am I the average player, or is everyone else way better off than me?

Can we just win like champions and not drag a victory through the dirt?

Pushing on like this and bickering is lessening the appeal

Good game, good sportsmanship, good fun!

Hugs.1856:

Well, let’s see if they can best what they’ve done 10 years ago:p

When Gw1 was E-sport before E-sport

Wow, really awesome link, didn’t realize GW1 had that kind of history. Thanks for posting.

sinject.4607:

Relentliss.2170:

AH guardian is the meta in WvW
A similar bunker guardian is the only thing in top Tpvp
Beserker guardian using neither AH or MF is the go in pve

So let’s nerf Meds

Maybe I am missing something.

nope.

the problem here specifically is the Valor traitline. it’s the most ridiculous traitline in the game right now bar none.

every other profession in the game has to make sacrifices, choices, and invest heavily in multiple traitlines to do well, that’s why every single meta build has 6 points in two traitlines and 2 points in one traitline or 6 points in one traitline and 4 in two other traitlines.

meditation guardian on the other hand can just invest in Valor, and then throw points around to wherever it wants. it is the only build i know of that only puts 1 point into a traitline, and it does this twice, just for the adept minor trait.

you don’t have to make any more investments for better offensive stats
you don’t have to make any more investments for better defensive stats
you don’t have to make any more investments for utility
as long as you have 6 in Valor, you’re mostly set; you can freely invest points unlike any other profession.

ferocity and toughness together is absolutely stupid. ferocity and toughness together on a traitline that offers very strong offensive/defensive utility is blindingly stupid.

imagine if thief’s Shadow Arts had ferocity instead of healing power.
or warrior’s Defense having ferocity instead of healing power.
or mesmer’s Chaos having ferocity instead of boon duration.
etc.

Go play a guardian in something other than open world leveling, then let me know if you still think that valor is the strongest thing ever or if it is the only thing guardians have to be viable and there is nothing else left to trait into. In turn making them a pigeon holed one trick pony with no build diversity.

Anyone can post a pic of a level 80 headshot, but it does not show your true experiences playing that character.

If you look at the play areas of guardians they are used in pve dungeons for reflects/blocks, valor is not used, survival is not needed.

WvW, guardians are used for stability and to contribute to condition cleansing. Valor is used with AH because of needs of survival.

SPvP, guardians have traditionally played as bunker because of a de-evolution of reasons, many player generated and not always based on fact.

First it was because they were advertised as “tanky support”, but then we realized there is no real tanking in this game. Still People continued to build survival on guard, as dps was not as effective.

Then guards were touted as superior support for team fights, condition cleansing and stability again, but they are often too slow for proper roaming, and still built for tanky survival.

In one of the spvp competitions, the announcers could only explain how “irritating” the guardian is and how the job is to be a nuisance to the other team. Not really effective in doing much but to try to keep the real fighters up and active. They still herald guards as mandatory in any high level team.

Now we have today, people are letting go of the “we need a guard” mentality and trying other things, and still being successful. I guess this is good for the game as you should never “need” a class, but it was the player perception that really makes the meta, and it is the not always fully factual ideas and group think that made the guardian “mandatory”.

Some groups are starting to think of the guard as less effective now, and we are seeing a lot more medi guards, because they are trying to scramble to be useful.

In that same competition broadcast, there was a medi guard and the announcers just laughed at him…..yay…..

There has traditionally been a hate of “paladin” archetypes in gamers of both table top and video games and highly reiterated in MMOs. Again, sometimes biases fill in the blanks and encourage a way of thinking that is not always logical.

I feel I’m spamming the forums the past few days, sorry.

Here is another one, I was again researching the current state of the game and I noticed a commonality in almost all the other classes meta builds for pvp.

They dip heavy into their class defining trait line (bottom on row).

The only two that don’t do this are Ranger and Guardian.

Is our class defining ability, Virtues, that ineffective?

Or is there a special meta build we need to do more research on (doubtful after 2 years of no change).

More specifically it seems our class defining trait line is Valor ><.

What do you guys think, what in the Virtues trait line could be improved or better synergized?

Black Box.9312:

The problem is that it is assumed that a guardian will have alternative heals built into their spec, so to compensate our primary heal skills are set behind higher cooldowns than the other classes.

The issue with this, however, is that it forces guardian builds to take either AH or MF as sustain to compensate. It is, in a sense, begging the question.

Thank you, exactly my original point in more succinct words.

Eclipse.5912:

3 conditions? You clearly haven’t tried condi guard extensively enough to be criticizing it. Let me draw it out for you in crayon:

Condition 1, Blindess: Flashing blade, VoJ, RoJ
Condition 2, Vulnerability: Upon blinding, enemy receives 3 stacks of vulnerability
Condition 3, Burning: If this needs further explaining…
Condition 4, Poison: Weapon swap, 60% uptime
Condition 5, Bleeding: Krait runes give this 100% uptime, 3 stack minimum
Condition 6, Torment: Krait rune elite activation; timing is everything.

6 conditions that stack in intensity, duration, and have nearly 100% uptime. Just because one guardian insists it doesn’t work, doesn’t mean that it won’t work. By the same token, although I say it works, maybe it won’t work for someone else. It all depends on play style, skill level, etc.

Condi guardian does work, and I beat 95% of the players I come across in 1v1s- especially zerker guardians. If you’re not winning with this comp, the problem’s with you, not the build.

Raze Guard

When talking about damage potential of condition builds, you shouldn’t try to include control conditions such as blindness. Also vulnerability is a condition that increases direct damage, not condition damage, so that should be off your list as well.

Lets talk about Burning, Poison, Bleeding, Torment.

Burning we already have established.

Poison is mostly an anti heal condition with fairly low damage output.

Bleeding is a good example, but the stacks are low. Three stacks will only do around 300 damage. When bleeding becomes threatening is when you start doing 10+ stacks for short durations.

Doing a 600 damage burn and maintaining a 300 damage bleed is pressure.

Ramping up the bleed to 10+ stacks becomes burst. Some classes can even ramp up to 20 stacks for decent amount of time. That is going from 900 damage a second to 1600-2600 damge a second. In almost every pvp game, kills are obtained by timing burst appropriately. This game has faster and more frequent windows of burst, but it is still there and utilized.

Torment is an interesting one that allows for low stacks to be as effective of high stacks of bleed “if” the target is moving. This has great potential at low stacks, as everyone tends to keep moving anyway. I have never seen anyone stop moving and stay still cause they have torment on….more dangerous to stay still and let yourself get hit even more than to keep moving.

Last damaging condition we didn’t mention is confusion. Another great condition, and I like how it is inline with the defensive nature of guardians. I also like how it has synergy with retaliation.

Retal will handle the fast multi hitting attacks while confusion punishes the heavy hitting single hit attacks that retal is ineffective with.

Another random topic from me as I reintegrate myself back into GW2.

PvP and weapons for the guardian.

Traditionally we have seen GS/Sw+Fc as our DPS weapon sets. Sometimes this swaps on scepter or even mace lately.

Normally people try hammer, it tends to have niche usage. Staff is wholly ignored except for bunker.

I wanted to think out loud about what I think a good pvp weapon should have.

First and foremost – Damage

A weapon should deal damage and provide a rotation of on demand burst and sustain damage.

Secondly – Mobility

This weapon/s should provide capability in mobile combat, especially for pvp environments.

Third – Utility

In GW2, utility type effects such as control or support are often integrated into the weapon sets.

So…

GS – Good mobility, burst capability, control aspects……..but easy for enemies to avoid

Sw – Good mobility………..minor burst, and some control with blinds and projectile blocks

Sc – “Ranged” but no tracking and easy to avoid. Burst but inconsistent damage, good control with immob and vulnerability…long cooldown.

Hmr – Good damage, decent burst, good control…..hard to do damage as it relies on auto attack and stationary targets

Mc – Decent burst damage, slow sustain damage, stationary again, support on it is weak without healing power, block is on a long cooldown.

Stf – Good support with might, still buggy burst, auto attack is….weak/strong? Good ae, can hit hard, but non threatening somehow without burst…could do with a secondary effect to it. CC on it is easy for most to avoid (line of warding).

Bottom line our weapons are often limited by mobility and ease of enemies avoiding our damage.

We often ask for soft CCs to help maintain combat distance, but no huge changes in 2 years. GS/Sw are our best bet more often than not…but it feels lacking still.

Mace is interesting, but primarily meant for stationary effects, and I would like to see more healing out of it possibly.

Symbols can do HUGE damage, especially layered……but they are stationary and slow ticking, so easy to avoid.

Our ranged options…we talked about that a lot in the past, but still lacking.

Most of our weapons tend to be direct damage oriented with not a lot of secondary effects to them. This is probably due to built in condition damage with Virtue of Justice.

I didn’t even go into shield/focus/torch. Torch is good?…but not used, focus is great, but long cooldowns…shield…oh shield….I see what you are trying to do but not there yet.

For sure, healing turret helps engies do amazing things. That was the first thing I noticed when watching engineers 1v3-5 people, the mobility and quick refresh of health constantly.

We as guardians rely a TON on meditations or altruistic healing depending on the game mode.

After that we also have dodge roll healing if you have good healing power.

Our weapon healing in staff and mace are “meh”, either cause cooldown or speed of heal. I don’t know…. Then there is our Virtue of Resolve….passive is really weak.

So typically our primary sustain is to block/blind, and rely on either AH for group fights, or meditations on solo.

I don’t feel meditations provide the same amount of sustain as other dps classes have, personally.

AH is amazing, in a group at about 600 or less range….horrible solo.

Of course it is clearly defined that guardians work best in a group and not so well solo, I guess we just need to accept that sometimes and always tag along with others?

The “worst” part of a condi build is the time it takes to kill.

Specifically, burning stacks in duration and not intensity. So most fights with pure burning will last about 25-35 seconds.

In comparison with burst damage that can do that in a range of 1-8 seconds.

Having multiple layers of conditions or stacking conditions, like confusion, bleeding and torment help provide burst opportunities with condition builds while maintaining pressure with conditions such as burning and poison.

Burning alone is the condition equivalent of direct damage auto attack. Sure if someone stays still long enough and lets it happen, it will kill them.

Side topic:

I used to run key farming when I had way too many black lion chests in my bank, I went through a few iterations of different builds and classes, and I noticed that I had an easier time against higher level targets when I used attacks with secondary condition damage associated with them, because “ding ding ding” it supplemented my damage and it was not mitigated by armor.

So our built in class mechanic of burning with virtue of justice, is a way to add 400-600 damage to our attack rotations with no extra effort.

Downside is now lost in how conditions are applied, condition caps and priorities, and balance pure burst versus hybrid condition application with stats being lost or ineffective as well as “weak” class mechanic in passive virtues and arguable usage on on use virtue effects.

Good idea, but a lot of holes as it pans out.

So I was reviewing some of the posted “metabattle” builds posted, trying to break ground on something we possibly might have missed over the last two years on Guardian builds.

While this came up originally at launch I wanted to revisit it: Guardian Heal skills

A commonality of all the “meta” builds posted have sub 30 second heal cooldowns on all the classes with 5k or more healing done.

(all not counting traits and/or gear, just baseline healing)

Exceptions to those are
Elementalist – Signet of Restoration

• 25s cooldown
• 3k heal
• BUT heals for 200 per cast while active

Warrior – Healing Signet

• 20s cooldown
• 3k heal
• BUT heals for 362 per second while active

Guardian – Shelter

• 30s cooldown
• just shy of 5k
• BUT blocks “almost” all attacks for 2 seconds

You could also tack on we get a passive 84 healing a second with Virtue of Resolve.

Our other healing options are not as viable, due to cast time/group oriented/or low healing output.

Here is where it becomes a pain, our signet is great…but that block is crucial sometimes, so more often than not we opt for Shelter.

Classes ability to stay alive in combat is based around self sustain and in all other classes cases the healing skill.

The guardian on the other hand uses the healing skill as a block mechanic to prevent damage, but our recovery of damage done is not the most effective depending on traits and combat scenarios.

We have the longest cooldown with the shortest/least gain…but sometimes that block is amazing and can stop thousands of damage…other times it just stops a hit or two worth a couple hundred.

Do you think our go to heal ability hinders our class performance? Is an unrealized reason why we may not have the same amount of sustain in dps roles as other classes do?

As the one of the lowest tier of HP, the other two classes have mobility to avoid damage and fast heal mechanics to encourage continual use of them for constant refresh of health pool.

Guardian’s on the other hand need to rely on additional traits/runes/and or healing power to achieve sustain.

We have gone over the lack of in combat mobility/disengage/engage, and it is pretty solid from the dev point of view that we are slow, immobile, front line fighters. Yet this description is one of our biggest Achilles Heels.

Random musing as I am looking into getting back into GW2 again and trying to reinvigorate my love for the class. What do you guys think? Am I off the target or should we consider this more?

Makes me wonder what ever happened to this:

http://intrinsicalgorithm.com/IANews/2014/04/now-consulting-at-arenanet-on-guild-wars-2/

Sounded like big news, and then it disappeared off the map. No comments on ANet end of changes. I would think they would want to tout any improved AI and such as something they are trying to do better.

I think this thread has good potential to highlight all the classes, if we post burst rotations and damage associated with traits/dmg multipliers or what not.

I was trying to establish burst rotations on a guardian and was roughly around 4-6k in a series of cooldowns (not factoring in crits or optimal traiting, just rough paper mathing on a build editor).

I tried a few weapon sets, but ultimately I looked at hammer and mace/torch or hammer and greatsword. Again not optimal builds but exploring burst potential.

zealot’s fire (2 press for direct damage) → protectors strike → swap hammer → mighty blow x 2 (that is a stretch but it can be used twice in a weapon swap)

Or replace one of those weapons with greatsword and do whirling wrath and leap of faith, still around the 5k mark.

I then turn around and looked at a hambow war and it was closer to 9-11k damage in a rotation. Using just:
combustive shot → arcing arrow → switch hammer → backbreaker → fierce blow → staggering blow.
(didn’t count earthshaker cause I think it would be on cooldown from combustive shot)

ele has ridiculous burst that I have seen videos on but don’t know the exact rotation. You guys are posting numbers but not a lot of data to back it up.

To reiterate, I think we should take a serious effort to list a class and weapon set and break down the burst potential with rotations and numbers. I would prefer people that play that class post their own burst rotations and not others complaining about another class that they feel is OP and kills them.

I know the bandwidth strain is constantly quoted as a reason for limits on conditions, and while I understand that every time you add an additional relationship/link in a database, it has to query and retrieve the data from potentially multiple databases from multiple people.

This would cause an exponential increase in “bandwidth usage”.

I still have a really hard time believing that the pipes for this game (while based on the GW1 engine) are SO limited that there is absolutely NO room to budge anywhere.

At most you would have the client send data packets that say: Trait selected, condition name, player condition damage stat, condition timer

Trait selected is a database entry so something like: A0001 is sent
Condition name is another database entry so referencing another database and pulling: B0001.

After that you send number values
1000 condition damage stat
15 second

The above would be sent at a max 25 times (25 stack cap).

After that the computation is done on the servers and the user client would then receive feedback that there is a condition on the target at 25 stacks with 15 seconds left till expiration. Damage values are sent back and health bars are decreased two more number values sent.

Not a drastically high bandwidth tax, and at most we added trait selected which is only a few bits to send a database name value “A0001” nothing more.

But I’m probably talking out my rear end and I don’t get paid to do this so I should just shut myself up and color.

I just can’t fathom why bandwidth is so limited for the game.
This post has more characters and data being sent than the above example for condition damage updates.

I have tried to point out what I think I see as a trend in developer thinking in the past, but I’ll reiterate here and then suggest what I think would improve shield while keeping in the original design goal.

Warrior shield skills have a stun and a melee block that can be traited to reflect projectiles too. (primarly melee oriented, with CC intended to keep enemies close)

Engineer shield skills have a defensive melee and offensive ranged stun/daze and projectile reflect with pushback on command. (Primarly projectile oriented, with CC meant to keep enemies away)

Guardian shield skills have a defensive group boon and a projectile absorb with pushback and heal.
(A diluted mix of warrior and engineer capabilities oriented on group support, keeping enemies away and encouraging allies to stay close)

Warrior and Engineer both get a physical block, with warrior being superior in duration and cooldown.

Engineers get superior projectile control with innate reflects on it.

Engineers get superior CC with ranged and 2 melee control abilities.

Guardians receive a “half block” (33%) with protection on the shield instead of a full block, but it can apply to the whole group.

We also receive a projectile absorb “for the group” and a heal “for the group”.

I can see the idea that it is group oriented and some of both engineer and warrior mixed together for melee and ranged “shield abilities”.

I would suggest though, that we do not have a reliable 1h weapon protection boon application like we have with the hammer.

Also since protection is only a “half block” (33%), it would need to have a longer up time than a full block to make it “equivalent” to a full block. Currently it has, at most, the same duration.

A shorter shield cooldown and/or a longer protection boon would greatly enhance shield usage I think, but the developers refrain from giving group oriented abilities a lot of application to discourage “healers and buff bots” and encourage “active group participation”.

The projectile absorb and heal side of the guardian shield… Both warrior and engineer can reflect projectiles. Again this may be weaker because of the group oriented aspect of the guardian and not wanting to make group abilities too good. I would like to see it gain a reflect and/or apply aegis to friendlies inside the projectile absorb shell.

Also it would be nice if shield 5 was a blast finisher.

Lastly, the heal on the shield is negligible, but once again it may be because of group abilities “must” be weaker than single target.

Dark FQ.1038:

Amplified Wrath.

What about amplified wrath? Are you saying it is enough to make guardians a viable condition build? If so I disagree.

It adds a huge amount of damage to burns, yes. The problem is that it is all based on a single condition as well as it has no “spike” capability, as the damage only stacks in duration and not intensity.

Having both in measured unison creates moments of burst and other moments of steady damage. Much like direct damage auto attack and burst cooldowns.

Right now burning is pretty much the “auto attack” of conditions, slow steady damage.

Tim.6450:

This will never happen since you increase the weight on the server and we have a condition cap for a reason ( and no, it is not because condi’s are OP).

It wouldn’t be a “new” condition, technically. It would just apply an on trait damage tick in association with vulnerability. Exactly like the terror trait that causes damage when targets are feared.

Shanks.2907:

It’s nice to try and work with what we’ve got, but I think changing a weapon would be easier to implement. Maybe the staff, as it’s damage already sucks and is used in mostly bunker type builds where condition damage would be most useful. 5 stacks of confusion on orb detonation sounds awesome, maybe with bleeding or torment on AA.

I would argue that sword and or scepter should get a condition if we want to change a weapon. Most condition applying attacks on weapon auto attacks are single target.

For those that have multi target condition application, they are typically in very short duration and/or have long cooldowns.

I don’t even play anymore, but I had a random thought today.

What if guardian’s gained a trait like necros had for Terror?

The new damaging condition could be vulnerability and it could stack in intensity.
With three traits that apply vulnerability either through symbols, immobilize, or through blinds, it opens up many weapons to stack 5-10 average stacks of vulnerability and some builds being able to spike 25 for short durations with immobilize, symbols, and blinds.

This would provide guardians a “bleed” like condition that they would have to spec for (I suggest replacing radiant retaliation). Through this you would have spike condition damage available and a second damaging condition to pair with burns.

Actual damage of the “vulnerability” damage would need tweaking to find a not overpowered spot, as we can maintain a good chunk of vulnerability with ease.

Thoughts? Long shot I know, but I thought it could be a promising idea for our lack of “viable” condition builds for guardians.

After people flock to FOTM medi guards and see themselves get rolled, and then as we see less and less need for bunker guards in the current meta…I hope they will stop saying “guardians are fine..in a good place” and take an honest look at the class and balance of it in the whole picture.

I would have liked to see staff auto have something connected to it, like an heal, or boon application on cast.

Orb of light is ok, but it still gets bugged out and stuck in animation sometimes, forcing a burst and longer cooldown duration. It’s application in healing has been HIGHLY mediocre at best and it is mostly just a way to push a little bit more dps out of staff…which is a joke.

Maybe make orb of light “Beam of Light” and have it work as a channeled heal and/or dps ability. It would work/look similar to mesmer greatsword auto attack but it could pierce and heal or damage allies or foes in the beam, up to 3? maybe 5 targets.

Take the burst out, as it is highly underused or buggy.

Symbol of Swiftness…. It was buff/nerfed. In a zerg, this is great now as it used to only give 1 second of swiftness if you had swiftness on already. So it works great for large group swiftness stacking while moving, as lots of people can run through it.

But now it is so much weaker running solo, we have even MORE problems with quality of life for traveling…not even in combat but just in general.

I would like to see all symbols see a fairly large increase in damage per tick, or have a way to “hasten” the symbol ticks so that they are deadly and fearful, instead of just lawl red circle ignore.

Empower works, it does what it needs to do, maybe larger range and/or extend to 10 targets? With AH that becomes OP though… at least larger range of effect.

Line of Warding….does what it needs to do also, I don’t see a great way to improve it. Used to be stationary to cast, but now we can move. Shorter cooldown would be nice.

Charak.9761:

but medi is shut down so hard by people who can kite.

That is every other profession in the game though. You might argue engi and necro are more “stationary” but they have fear/stuns/immobs to kind of stationary kite.

I read a few of the necro threads, bottom line seems you guys want to be able to heal while in DS.

I have a necro, but I don’t play it seriously. Healing while in DS seems like the logical answer, but prior to this I realized that necros did not have a large availability to vigor. This caused me to ask the necro boards how they survive and avoid damage. The conclusion I came up with is that dodges + death shroud are “avoidance” to damage to your actual health pool.

So instead of thinking of it as a second life bar, think of it as additional “dodges” to flicker on and off as needed. In focused fire, any class will die to multiple attackers, so being forced to burn all of your survival in one go leaves you open.

With healing in DS, there probably should be a reduction in availability of DS then, so you can’t just outright tank and live forever.

Although my question was for those of you in this thread, if you are complaining so much how would “you” fix it. So researching others ideas would be inaccurate of me to find another person’s answers/suggestion and apply them to “you”.

Unless you have no real input, but simply complaints, and just like to repeat what others have said before you.

On topic of sustain versus able to survive a burst.

The survival mechanic of necros “is” the death shroud. Sustain would be the high availability of said mechanic. The ability to keep high damage ticking while surviving large amounts of damage is, on the surface, where a lot of the complaints come from.

Would you guys, as obviously necro players, want more availability of death shroud? What is “sustain” to you, because surviving a lot of damage in a fight and outliving your opponents equates to sustain. There needs to be a gap where you have an opening though, otherwise you are just always sustaining and never dying i.e. OP.

How would you create a counterable sustain mechanic that will enhance survivability without making something unbalanced.

Off topic, so I was watching the videos for both the engi and the guard, and it was actually the engi that kept everyone alive and not the guard as the earlier claim was above.

The guard provided tons of retal, which in turn caused the zergs to keep damaging themselves while the necros survived tons of damage.

After that the guard provided “some” might stacking, but the range was inconsistent so only himself or maybe one other necro would gain the might from staff at times.

Additionally the guard provided very minor area control with random wards in the middle of the battle field. Best use was at the choke point on the bridge, but after that he just seemed to cast on cooldown.

Condi removal, stability and annoyance factor were the side support items he provided, but they never seemed to come into huge play, as he was never focused and not a ton of CC was avoided.

I’m just entertained by the idea that finally people believe that something other than a guard can “bunker” go back a few months and look at people laugh at warrior or even engi as a bunker.

Harbinger.8637:

I’ve always enjoyed bunker guard because it’s a different type of bunker than the norm.

? Has something changed, because I thought bunker guard “was” the norm.

Or since the last tourney without guards have we finally broken that mandatory item :p

didn’t know about mass invisibility, and communal defense is still relatively unused and new enough where I forget about it :p

Interesting break down of “raid” abilities though, and the supposed “function” of each class.

So:
Warrior – Swiftness and Mobility (crippled/immob/chill condition removal)
Mesmer – Surprise (Invisibility)
Guardian – Defense (Blocks, with possible heal and/or damage attached)

What else do we have? I’m not counting projectile reflects because that is not per a target, but more a “retaliation” for projectile mechanics.

On a 30-40 second window for the other two utilities, without a condition cleanse, and no blink/mobility (sitting duck).

Sure the guard healed up and survived initial burst damage with burst healing, but the burst damage is ready to down the guard far earlier than the healing will be ready, and he will have no good way to stick to you.

To OP, I wondered same though on having a way to up healing power via boons for short durations, much like might. Or even have traits that convert power into healing power… those would make certain dps specs on some professions even more powerful through sustain though.

So hard to balance across all spectrums of builds/professions/gametypes, thus I guess no action taken as of yet.

a simple but huge thank you. I now #believeinevan.

Over a year ago on a post and he comes back, necros it, and makes the changes he “could” have made

I see a lot of money needs to be where mouth is

Was on a warrior alt and I noticed the warhorn had a 10 target cap. I was under the impression almost everything was a 5 target cap, save for a couple of 3 target abilities.

Are there any other professions/weapons that have a 10 target cap, and if not, should there be more of these? Warhorn is amazing for larger WvW interactions. Would upping target cap to 10 be bad for possibly other things?

Wisp.9725:

I kind of wish there was a way to squeeze in an extra point for additional Mace damage, but I suppose there’s no way to do that without sacrificing symbol damage.

I think that one is a toss up. My logic was, that symbol was the primary form of damage with the mace and hammer, with the auto attack strikes as extra. So I got 10% out of symbols on both weapons versus 5% out of all mace strikes. Maybe dependent on if you choose to take hammer or another weapon swap.

Wisp.9725:

I don’t see the advantage of Cleric stats on the Hammer though. I think Berserker would be better there (I already have Zojja’s Warhammer too). Am I wrong here? The Mace has two healing abilities compared to the Hammer’s potential of one.

I took the clerics gear on weapons simply out of stat balance. Continuously pushing precision up past 50% will create a deficit in your other stats, with possibly less return out of it.

Also, was looking for a gear set that would help push healing power up closer to the 900-1k mark. So clerics gear helped provide a little bit extra power and healing power without wasting stats on precision. You could possibly do more stat balance and trade out other pieces to raise and lower precision out. I think popular consensus is that your crit chance should be around 35-45, and hitting 50 starts to waste stats. Anything past that you really shouldn’t be focusing on it. I like 50 though.

After that I wanted to get the crit damage as close to 200 as possible, because doubling your damage is key to increasing your burst/dps. You could have high crit chance but low crit damage and it equates to nothing.

I haven’t looked at this chart in a while but if you want to balance crit and crit chance look it up here: http://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Critical_hit#Average_damage_increase

Wisp.9725:

Edit: Does the trait Protective Reviver work with Signet of Mercy? That could be useful it it does, since we’re not getting a ton of use out of Superior Aria.

There is a fairly big lack of shouts being used, and you could replace superior aria with writ of exaltation probably. Or even pure of heart.

Or you could change some utilities to bring hold the line to keep regen ticking while not in mace, to help offset the lack of a secondary healing skill on hammer besides symbol healing.

__

Again, I emphasize this is not field tested, so if you do run it or a variation, put some feedback and let us know how it goes

http://gw2skills.net/editor/?fVAQNApdSlsApXolCxTI8DNR8gUbgEY/s727OC-TBSBABCqPgSVIMTJ4VK/i4UAkq6Lzs/AAPBASBMqyI-e

Just spitballing here, and taking a stab at what you want while still maintaining some damage. Of course not optimal, but the focus on this is to provide symbol damage with a focus on utility and healing.

Stats
I was aiming for:

• Moderate healing of about 800+
• Crit damage of at least 200%
• Crit rating of somewhere around 40-50
• Power also I wanted over 2k
• Toughness was an after though after hitting the other marks.

Damage

• Mace symbol provides a potential crit of 1241 per tick and normal hit of 620 per tick. With Writ of Persistence this would do an overall 8687 crit and 4340 per symbol duration of 7 ticks (not counting vulnerability stacks that it adds)

• Hammer auto symbol will also provide 1364 crit ticks 682 normal ticks and full rotation damage of 6820 crit and 3410 normal damage per symbol placed for 5 ticks.

Healing
Additionally overlapping healing via regeneration, writ of the merciful, and virtue of resolve will provide 547 healing a second.

Support
Utilities are a toss up, but standardized wall of reflection, and retreat for blocks and reflects, then signet to help boost healing power if wanted. Can be replaced easily.

You provide your team with an additional block with mace, and some extra healing if they are in symbols with you. You can also swap to hammer if you are topped off and don’t need healing and want protection instead.

Misc
To maximize damage you will probably want to swap and overlap symbols periodically, which will provide small bursts of damage as well as healing. Weapon sigils could be replaced with an on swap type sigil of wanted, such as battle for more might stacks possibly, or if you want more healing do water for 30% chance on hitting enemies.

Additionally the heal could be replaced with healing breeze for more group healing and the off hand focus could be a torch for group condition cleansing.

This should provide a “defensive/offensive” type mace build. Kind of sucky at healing or damage, but interesting compromise between the two.

You will NOT tanking in this, though. It is meant to help keep health recovery going while still utilizing dodges and blocks when called for.

DISCLAIMER
Have I run this? No, I just made it up based on your requirements, so it can easily be reworked or scrapped for something better.

Staff, as you know already, has bad “dps” but it can be used to burst.

Might stacks will provide some good increased power, but you are prone to damage while channeling that.

The primary form of damage for staff is the auto attack. Additionally the orb cast is on a very fast cooldown and will contribute to “dps” if you just cast it on cooldown but not explode the orb. For burst you can pop the orb for extra damage, but normally better to just cast and leave alone.

Another option is to put a sigil of rage on the staff to provide added burst damage and increased dps. With decent crit rating of maybe a low ball 15-20% you should see quickness enough times to enjoy the fast auto attack burn moments.

One more thing to consider is that staff hits multiple enemies with ease, this will proc VoJ very often in clusters. IF you are so inclined you can trait down virtues and pick up Permeating Wrath, to stack ae burn damage, but normally the investment for this is so high that it makes it pointless to get.

So all in all, auto attack, orb auto fire, sigil of rage, and might stack when you can (normally before a fight and not during).

If this is a simple pve fight, you can might stack, place symbol, throw orb/burst it, then continue to auto attack.

Auto spam is great for pve zerg fests as well. For the sake of saying it, don’t bring this to dps in dungeons or be ready to be yelled at. PvP/wvw use as you deem necessary, but don’t expect to be bursting anyone down and reigning over dead bodies.

Symbol and bursting orb are a loss in dps, as I think the empower channel was too.

I was informed that in the video it still works without an ally, just no shadow step. I have not watched the video yet myself. Will watch now.

edit:

inconclusive, The skill was used in the “ready up – skill bar” segment without a friendly in range, no teleport, went on cooldown, but moved nowhere. No green numbers showed up saying the heal activated since the health bar was full, and this will need to be tested once we see it go live.

Also, for sake of showing the previous functionality, here is a screenshot showing two ticks of healing from Merciful Intervention. One from Monk’s Focus, and one from the skill itself.

ah ok, didn’t watch stream. thanks for clarification.

edit:

I watched the stream, and that is inconclusive on if it heals without an ally or not.

Since the life bar was full, there were no green numbers, so you could not tell if there were two ticks of healing or just one.