Guild Wars 2

was just thinking that merciful intervention was pretty much nerf/buffed.

Previously you could use it as targetless instant secondary heal (monk’s focus + skill heal was something about 4-5k heal on one button).

Now we can’t activate it WITHOUT an ally nearby, thus nixing some of that sustain it previously provided BUT giving us a shadow step IF allies are in range.

If anything, they gave Merciful Intervention a small buff/nerf.

Previously you could put it on your bar and use it as targetless instant heal from ability and a second heal from Monk’s Focus trait. This was pretty much a second heal skill like using shelter.

Now we can’t activate it WITHOUT an ally nearby, thus nixing some of that sustain it previously provided BUT giving us a shadow step IF allies are in range.

What if they revamped spirit weapons to simply work like our actual weapons to provide that utility without wielding the actual weapon.

Scrap bow as we don’t have one.

Make sword work as is and tweek numbers, high auto attack damage. Activation blocks projectiles.

Hammer now provides symbol of protection on auto. Activation remains the same, but blast finisher (as they are doing now).

Add staff, this provides swiftness to nearby allies and activation is empower for 12 stacks of might.

Leave shield as is, maybe provide pushback on shield pulse, but could be OP.

They don’t have to be new and fancy, they just need to have a reason and work. This would allow more “utility” without wielding the weapon.

Another thing that always bugged me is the cast time to summon, if they were permanent, then I’m fine with it. But since they are so temperamental and some what supposed to be summon then activate to some degree, the extra cast time to summon and then activate makes for a long ability cast time.

Torment is a viable answer to limit mobility with a risk/reward and cleanse type counter play. I know originally people felt it was not iconic to the archtype, but just thinking mechanics.

The symbol chill across all weapons would still only benefit hammer/mace, as they have the most repeating symbol uptime in combat.

Snares/immobilizes are another option, but they are becoming increasingly annoying in lockdown (overlapping immobs can be very op)

Gap closers are nice, but in order to make an impact we need to do damage in those small windows, thus maybe upping damage by a few degrees would be good, but no one wants to see more damage, as we are afraid it would end up being OP.

Greater sustain across the board for all builds would allow an outlast style combat, which would help dps, but make bunker even more op (although people are starting to discredit the guard bunker in today’s meta).

Swiftness/movement speed is available, but we sacrifice things in order to achieve it, while other professions “seem” to get in with better synergy. Maybe others can put insight on that and clarify my bias?

Maybe a cripple on burning with a 10 second cooldown and 3 second duration. We have lots of burning, but we can sacrifice that for burst damage, avoidance, or group play. Make us want to keep VoJ up instead of spam it.

If invested, possible to make it a 5 sec to 10 sec duration/cooldown, but sacrifices made. This could easily change to torment and maybe give us a condition build as well as answer some mobility problems, build diversity?

Obtena.7952:

…Anet want us in the fight, they want it hard for us to disengage.

I am fine with that, but some of the things we are lacking are the ability to “engage” the fight, if people can simply walk away from us.

The other side would be to balance the risk/reward on damage/survivability on being so melee oriented in a overwhelming ranged target AE and condition spam play style it has developed into.

Even bunkers have problems surviving that. We are reaching a point of ineffectiveness…not there yet, but I feel like it is over the horizon.

There are a few posts talking about how pointless a medi guard is in group fights, especially at high end play. PvE will laugh at you for bringing a medi guard, and in wvw the only time you are medi is small team/solo roaming for sudden ganking.

After that you are typically an AH type survival build, reliant on allies within shout range, or a full glass pve spec where dodge is the only thing you need and we are not worried about pve mobs kiting us.

I hate reposting, especially my own stuff since it seems self centered, but… since I know not everyone actually reads the guard forum, or may not play a guard themselves. I’m gonna repost what I summed up in that forum here:

CMF.5461:

I see a lot of people going crazy and over exaggerating the changes, saying dps guards are going to be op.

Here is my take on the changes, for what it’s worth.

Elite focus

• Stability will allow players to activate the 5 skill on both tomes, the tomes themselves are still underplayed – Ineffective change

Tome of Wrath

• More damage, faster cooldown, they are begging for us to use these tomes…but see below on renewed focus change – ineffective

Tome of Courage

• Better cleansing, but cleansing is not why people picked up this tome, elite focus change will help players get the group full heal off though. Niche change and ineffective, again see renewed focus change below

Glacial Heart

• More frequent soft CC is a good thing, 15 seconds sounds like a solid middle ground and the devs are listening, hammer is highly under utilized except in wvw, and has problems with gap closing anyway probably best in zerg play – Nice but ineffective change

Spirit Weapons

• Reducing the auto attack cooldown by trait will provide more burst for spirit weapon users, but the spirit weapons will still be prone to easy death and unpredictable with movement patterns
• Providing blast finisher on hammer is interesting, but hard to control and monitor when it is in a combo field or not, and will miss probably more times than naught
• Sword of Justice vulnerability is interesting and will help increase percent damage done by not just the spirit weapon but the guardian and any surrounding allies
• Aegis on shield activate is welcome, but wont see much play
• Ground target bow activate should have been in game since launch
• Bottom line, some quality of life changes, but spirit weapon builds are still limited by utility slots being taken up and heavy investment in traits. They tend to be weaker in the long run due to the above reasons, and only effective in bursts of cooldowns then totally ineffective till spirit weapons are back – Ineffective change, but nice that they are testing new things

Merciful Intervention

• Thank you for trying to provide more mobility and control, something we guards have been asking for with this skill since launch, limit of ally in field is a catch 22, but it may help while grouped. Pointless solo. – Possibly good group escape ability….

Renewed Focus

• People are freaking out about this providing fury, I just want to remind people that the fury will last about 4 seconds, with 2 of those being the channel of renewed focus in the first place, thus 2 seconds of fury (1 maybe 2 hits), not a dps increase.
• Biggest plus on this change is providing a cooldown reduction on the skill, thus further ingraining the ability is a mandatory for all guards and further pushing tomes out of play (redacting any changes they had above). Also this is an easily accessible trait to pick up in valor 1, so any guard can get this if they want.
• Good survival change for all guards, will make bunkers even stronger, not as much help for dps, but nice.

TLDR – Renewed Focus and Glacial Heart are the only real changes we may see, and RF mostly helps bunkers even further bunk. Good try, thanks for more than just tooltip updates, although not revolutionary to the guard class as a whole in the long run I don’t think.

Feel free to continue discussion there if you like.

I see a lot of people going crazy and over exaggerating the changes, saying dps guards are going to be op.

Here is my take on the changes, for what it’s worth.

Elite focus

• Stability will allow players to activate the 5 skill on both tomes, the tomes themselves are still underplayed – Ineffective change

Tome of Wrath

• More damage, faster cooldown, they are begging for us to use these tomes…but see below on renewed focus change – ineffective

Tome of Courage

• Better cleansing, but cleansing is not why people picked up this tome, elite focus change will help players get the group full heal off though. Niche change and ineffective, again see renewed focus change below

Glacial Heart

• More frequent soft CC is a good thing, 15 seconds sounds like a solid middle ground and the devs are listening, hammer is highly under utilized except in wvw, and has problems with gap closing anyway probably best in zerg play – Nice but ineffective change

Spirit Weapons

• Reducing the auto attack cooldown by trait will provide more burst for spirit weapon users, but the spirit weapons will still be prone to easy death and unpredictable with movement patterns
• Providing blast finisher on hammer is interesting, but hard to control and monitor when it is in a combo field or not, and will miss probably more times than naught
• Sword of Justice vulnerability is interesting and will help increase percent damage done by not just the spirit weapon but the guardian and any surrounding allies
• Aegis on shield activate is welcome, but wont see much play
• Ground target bow activate should have been in game since launch
• Bottom line, some quality of life changes, but spirit weapon builds are still limited by utility slots being taken up and heavy investment in traits. They tend to be weaker in the long run due to the above reasons, and only effective in bursts of cooldowns then totally ineffective till spirit weapons are back – Ineffective change, but nice that they are testing new things

Merciful Intervention

• Thank you for trying to provide more mobility and control, something we guards have been asking for with this skill since launch, limit of ally in field is a catch 22, but it may help while grouped. Pointless solo. – Possibly good group escape ability….

Renewed Focus

• People are freaking out about this providing fury, I just want to remind people that the fury will last about 4 seconds, with 2 of those being the channel of renewed focus in the first place, thus 2 seconds of fury (1 maybe 2 hits), not a dps increase.
• Biggest plus on this change is providing a cooldown reduction on the skill, thus further ingraining the ability is a mandatory for all guards and further pushing tomes out of play (redacting any changes they had above). Also this is an easily accessible trait to pick up in valor 1, so any guard can get this if they want.
• Good survival change for all guards, will make bunkers even stronger, not as much help for dps, but nice.

TLDR – Renewed Focus and Glacial Heart are the only real changes we may see, and RF mostly helps bunkers even further bunk. Good try, thanks for more than just tooltip updates, although not revolutionary to the guard class as a whole in the long run I don’t think.

I just wanted to jump in and +1 ArchonWing for some sound advice and break down on why zealot’s is not “that” great.

In theory it sounds good, but the break down of heals and build style is described well and should help clarify things.

ArchonWing.9480:

…
The final issue is finding things that actually scale with healing power and that tends to be the death of it. The primary forms of guardian self heal, altruistic healing and monk’s focus aren’t too hot with healing power. Regeneration, dodge heals, and mace attacks do, but that is pretty niche. All, and all healing power points to a group support guardians, as healing power improves group heals like selfless daring way more. In the end, I see more opportunities on zealot gear on my thief than my guardian…
…

Topic change a bit:

Point clearing in sPvP, it has become increasingly more deadly for bunkers to stay on point because of the excessive amount of target AoE from engineers, necros, elementalists, rangers, mesmers.

I think warrior and thieves can contribute, but to a lesser degree than the above listed.

Considering our weapon selection, we typically are PBAoE (putting us in the thick of the damage and dying). Our ranged dps item, the scepter will distribute damage between all the targets inside only doing one or two hits per a target and even possibly wiffing and missing some of the bolts.

In comes the staff. Staff in WvW and PvE open world is an amazing “tag” weapon, but most people ignore it because the dps is bad and mostly is a support weapon.

I feel it can satisfy the requirement for point clearing ae spam though. In optimal sPvP conditions you can have it hit for about 800-1500 per attack every +/- 1 second. It puts us outside of the ae zone and it has a very wide cone to maximize target potential (up to 5).

In experimenting, I put a sigil of rage on it, and it is quite entertaining and procs frequently on weapon switch to staff. Auto attack under haste gives about 7 attacks in 3 seconds (versus about 3 attacks in 3 seconds doing 4500 dmg). This provides a potential 10k burst every 30 seconds of sigil cooldown to 5 targets on ae of a point. Very doable in real gameplay situations.

Maybe not build for damage in the long run with staff, but one of the best ways to get effectiveness out of staff is to give it a sigil of rage and auto attack.

Lightsbane.9012:

Alga.6498:

Am I the only one who does not know what DDOS means? :/

denial of service.

distributed denial of service, if you were wondering what the other D was.

In essence a mass of computers (usually trojans installed on computers, unbeknownst to the user) spam an IP address or route, to inhibit traffic and or overload the server so it stops working properly.

The only way to really stop that is to find a way to redirect the traffic without losing the legitimate traffic such as us actual users. Or possibly put a buffer on the inbound traffic to only release handshakes in clusters instead of sequentially, thus ignoring multiple handshake requests that come from these DDOS attacks. If you do that though, you could drop legit users too, but at least the currently connected users wouldn’t drop. New connecting users may have an issue though.

Can’t identify the source too easily unless there is a direct link from the zombie computers to the kill command computer, which there probably isn’t if they are smart.

Normal tactics now are probably wait till it blows over, unfortunately. Or if we find the guy, break his kneecaps :p

oxtred.7658:

Active defense is part of the guard mechanic and you’ll use it in all game modes. That said, you can’t rely only on active defenses in pvp because you can’t avoid all incoming damages. Best guards does rely heavily on blinds, blocks, etc, but they still need to trait either for meditation heal as a dps spec or ah as a bunker spec.

As far as your build goes, you’re really squishy for any sort of pvp, It can work as a roaming spec in www, but that’s about all. I would swap two handed mastery for empowering wrath if you’re using strenght runes. The minor in valor isn’t incredibly useful either, my call would be either 0/5/0/4/4 or 0/3/0/4/6 if you really want to play like that.

I was actually surprised how long I was able to survive with overlapping ae blinds and timed aegis triggers while having no real regenerative ability. Paper for sure, but was going for a proof of concept so tried to run without monk’s focus or altruistic healing.

It is missing something, which is why I opened up the idea to the community for theory crafting. It survived about as long as a medi guard would, but didn’t recover for chain fights quickly enough, thus lack of sustain for long fights (limit of many/most dps builds).

In the end I keep building back to meditations, which is why I was so quick to shut down the earlier link. I already know about meditations and standardized meta builds, trying to see what we can do outside of the box.

Maybe creative use of sigil/runes or something, not competitive for sure, but just experimenting for fun.

Thanks for input all and I hope people stay encouraged to push the boundaries instead of limiting themselves to what is already known.

been there, done that since launch, looking to try new things and theory craft. New ideas not old ones, or we go stale.

Been gone a long time and some recent posts have inspired me to come back and test things again to do that whole meta break that would be so revolutionary but never happens.

That said I was contemplating why the pve meta build is so good. The answer is active defense/utility. Blinds and blocks cover the need for survival, allowing full zerker.

Taking that a step further I wanted to test more focused active defense in spvp.

http://gw2skills.net/editor/?fVAQNAR8dElCRBGBlpxbDmBYA3A

This is what I would consider to be the skeleton of active defense. Maximized blind and aegis block cooldown reduction so that it happens more often in combat.

The next logical step would be to captialize on the blinds and apply vulnerability on them, thus putting you at:

http://gw2skills.net/editor/?fVAQNAR8dElCRBARlpJ0qAAzYYGuB

You now have 3 points to spend, could put 1 more into radiance to hasten refresh on voj blind and might, then 2 into zeal for fiery wrath and more power/dmg, or just go all 3 into radiance for powerful blades and radiant power for the 10% dmg buff there.

Another option may be 1 into radiance and the remaining 2 maybe into honor picking up pure of heart for some survival or empowering might for more dmg? Possibly even pure of voice since shouts are on short cooldown.

Since we are focusing on active defense it should be zerker amulet and maybe strength runes.

Energy sigil for sure, for constant swapping and more active survival with blinds/dodges on both weapons, secondary sigil could be dps or survival oriented.

I just ran this and it did really well against 1v1/2 but was easily focused down. I even ran with intelligence sigils for auto crits on swaps, but it is missing something overall.

How would you as the community try to build towards active defense dps?

What if, instead of world bosses spawning in the world map, a portal spawned for interested players to zone into a separate boss fight map, this would alleviate the disinterested parties from interfering with the map population count of interested parties.

It would still be prone to population limit per map, and large groups wanting to be in the same map, but it would remove some of that afk activity since they would have to click the portal.

If thematically they wanted the world to be “dangerous” when these bosses are around, have spill over encounters around the portal be active until the boss event is over. If the boss event succeeds, then the world is happy place.

If the event fails, then the spill over encounters persist, making that area more dangerous till the next encounter.

Same encounter/mechanics, just move the fight to another room.

Game mode changes perspective.

PvE/Dungeons – Build for dps, provide projectile reflects and aegis blocks, as well as stability when needed. Some mixture of blind debuff support as well when the encounter utilizes it.

PvP – Build for team fights with staff might typically and group multiplied heals via altruistic healing, this provides fast self heals by distributing boons to multiple people, and makes it harder to focus you down when in a group. Again provide blocks via aegis or even mace if being utilized. Also huge is group condition removal as well as area denial via wards to hold off point captures and keep points ticking as long as possible.

WvW – Stability is huge in ball zergs frontlines, after that contribute to the blast finishers with hammer if you are built that way to provide water field heals or fire field might stacks, provide some more group condition removal, and help dps and spam VoJ blinds.

Roaming WvW – Many times people rely on your blocks/blinds/grouphealing/condition removal in various ways. Again Stability is a huge contribution to allow other players function better.

In the end we provide a lot of group utility with decent damage or healing. Not the “best” at anything but strong in many things. Solo you may have mixed results in how powerful you feel, but in a group others will promote you as highly helpful, even if you don’t feel it.

That was a quick blurb as I could make it, I’m sure others can go into more detail.

I think a lot of people under estimate hammer damage. It is actually higher than sword auto attack dps if I had done my math and animation times right.

It lacks the burst potential of other weapons, such as greatsword, but you swap to the GS for the burst abilities and go back hammer and you maintain that burst dps just as you would with swapping gs and going back sw/foc for auto. Greatsword auto is actually slightly lower, discounting might stacks it provides than hammer. Again assuming I did animation and damage calculations correct.

Hammer is slow, but since it has an overlapping symbol the whole duration of the auto attack it doubles up the damage while it is going, providing a higher “unmodified” dps.

Again the problem is utility and situation/need of hammer skills. sword or scepter also work well for higher off burst sustain auto dps (counting smite as part of the “auto attack”) but the sword also provides extra projectile blocking utility and blinds for survival.

Negating projectiles or adding another layer of blinds to prevent an attack as a whole is normally better than taking damage at all, even if it reduced by 33% with protection boons, thus sword tend to win out for the meta build, but hammer has it’s place. As much so scepter, depending on the fight and if blinds or projectiles are even needed or work.

Also consider mob size, as smite tends to miss half of the hits on normal and smaller sized targets. If it is large, you may get more auto/smite out of scepter than sword. Again not everything is about dps but consider utility and situation as well.

mace and staff have the lowest dps, even if you include symbols as a secondary ticking dmg while auto attacking. They do provide, how ever, other mechanics such as heals, blocks, and might boons, when needed.

Normally you don’t need might boons due to fire field blasting and other classes providing enough combined might, and heals are not as readily necessary in pve, but in pvp they see a lot of use.

So when it comes down to it, hammer is not a bad choice and provides a easily obtained passive utility with out hurting dps. Sword on the other hand provides more “skilled” active use of utility that can complete negate some attacks, and scepter is pretty much just raw damage, unless you count immobilize to keep targets stationary, which HAS come in handy in some fights, such as the aetherblade cannons breaking shield stacks.

Following the meta build in pve will serve you well when it all comes together, that is why it is the meta build.

But, bottom line: use what you need, when you need, don’t ignore options cause someone told you something else is “best”.

For sake of accurate information, there are more than one trait that increases hammer effectiveness in different ways beyond Glacial Heart.

Hammer is a symbol synergistic weapon that actually gets a majority of its consistent damage from the auto attack + symbol it places, so doing any other skills beyond auto tends to decrease it’s dps. I think even mighty blast decreased dps, but decent small burst dmg to land in pvp, with fast refresh.

These five all help hammer damage in different ways to include more ticks, ease of hitting more targets, 10% damage buff, or extra proc of damage.

http://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Writ_of_Exaltation (sure why not if getting persistence)

http://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Writ_of_Persistence (consistent dps increase)

http://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Symbolic_Power (good, but far into zeal, third hit gets 10% dmg as well as symbol ticks last I knew)

http://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Glacial_Heart (meh at most, but I think it provided a aoe dmg hit along with the chill application)

http://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Symbolic_Exposure (each stack gives 1% extra damage, up to about 4 with consistent auto if I remember right)

You also have some healing abilities on it to pull some defensive ability out, but not normally needed in pve dps type content.

http://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Writ_of_the_Merciful (layer with other heal effects for best return)

http://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Altruistic_Healing (multiple targets in range give more return, also blast finisher buffs apply heals as well, which hammer is plentiful)

Hammer actually has really good dps, but with cycling between greatsword/sword, you are able to use cooldowns of greatsword for bursts which heighten the dps, then camp sword auto for decent high dps on auto attack, as well as providing blinds and projectile blocks which are good utility (as well as vulnerability stacks if traited).

Hammer normally isn’t advised in group content because the constant light fields interfere with fire fields that provide might stacks in combat, but honestly, if your group is that organized, they wont need that many might rebuffs mid combat.

While I know you understand that clerics in pve will be considered a bad build, I want to link Obals post to you anyway:

Guardian PvE Guide by Obal

The reason I am linking it is not necessarily the zerker meta droning, but because he has very valid points on why to bring certain skills and how the guardian assists the group effectively.

Beyond that, I also want to suggest instead of pure clerics, instead you mix in magi gear with things with power/crit rating. (I know you already bought the gear sorry)

Try to hit a healing power range of about 700-900 then move the stats to something more damage oriented. The reason being that you will see just as much healing effectiveness at those ranges in terms of heals per a second.

After that, focus on layers of healing to vastly ramp up healing per second. So things like regen/vor/writ of merciful/mace auto/dodge heals. You can even throw in monks focus with just smite condition if need be for some burst healing like a second self healing skill.

By doing that you take each individual heal and combine that for a larger heals per second up to the 600-700 range depending on healing power. Works better than just healing power alone and one skill and allows you to put stats back into damage or something else.

Even in full clerics gear you won’t be “tanking” anything, so you can just get “enough” healing and then flip back to damage.

I suggest at least 40% crit chance with 200% crit damage, and aim for near 2k power, with the rest of your stats in healing if you wanted. Mix in self might stacks with sigils of battle and on crit might trait to help pad your damage. But in groups you may find someone already stacking might for you, and it becomes less useful to invest into.

The idea is to at least double your damage, and after that you can either continue to go full damage or if you want to go with healing or toughness/vitality.

I think if you do the above, you can have decent damage, but still reach the level of healing that you had desired. You will “not” be a tank though, no one is. You can however enjoy a lot of green numbers for you and your group while still seeing ok damage numbers and decent kill times.

Facts:
hit for 6k with smite condition (confirmed)
used healing meditations (probable)
target had around 2200 armor (confirmed)

Speculation:
14k hp (possible)

Based on a build editor, the only way to get a 6k smite condition on a 2200 armor target is to have full/most zerker gear, 10% burning, 10% condition target, 25 stacks of might and/or vulnerability stacks.

So 2 or 3 in zeal, at least 5 in radiance, and 6 in valor.

This puts the player at around 10k health, but the OP said it “felt” like 14k life. The “feel” may have been based on how much damage his attacks did to the hp bar percentage, and blocks/blinds can attribute to lower damage being done, as well as protection and incoming healing in bursts. So I put less merit in the total life and base it on actual damage done.

Sounds like he was a glassy meditation build with high burst. 2/5/6/x/x
Probably wearing enough zerk for at least 210-220% crit damage, and most likely runes with damage modifiers on them as well, like scholar or strength.

Based on damage reported done and game mechanics, that seems like the only way to achieve 6k damage on a smite condition to a 2200 armor target.

Azrael.4960:

Having played GW1 and visited all those places, I quite like the fact that I’m on Gandara, the moon shaped fortress, where you had to go rescue a white clad Kormir, by smuggling in as guards, with a centaur prisoner, then start a fight, and chop your way out….

getting story yet?

That’s no moon, its a fortress!

ThatShortGuy, arn’t you a little short to be a stormtrooper guard?

Help me Logan Thackeray, you’re my only hope!

This is actually really awesome and interesting. Thanks for sharing it!

can’t block or reflect/absorb his projectiles anymore, so just have to time the headshot and dodge it.

Bring teleports and/or scepter to reach him as he moves around, this way you don’t have to navigate through the minefield as much. Just be wary if he is standing too close to one, as you may teleport yourself onto the mine you are trying to avoid.

I actually think I did the 5 gambits on the ooze last year with WoR and spirit shield. Less incoming damage that way.

in a cluster of people, torch 5 is pretty good condition removal support. shield 4 is a bit harder to justify, but I see what they were trying to do with it. Instead of full block we get a “half” block with 33% damage reduction that goes to a group.

Versus warrior shield which is 100% block for self only.

Engineer shield on the other hand provides stuns and projectile reflects, so that is what our shield 5 is, for bonus information.

We have the kitten version of a warrior and engineer shield with a focus on group utility. Not great for us, but useful for allies?

Typical burst setups would combine focus “shield of wrath” with any of those mentioned abilities to provide another big hit.

What I can see happening in that scenario is at least 3 vulnerability, 3 might,
With that you get:
SoW + VoJ + Chains of Light + Smite + Leap + Smite Condition + WW = around 13k dmg
(if all smite strikes hit, which is almost never)

Add in 200% crit damage, you can get about 26k damage, if you are really lucky on all crits and smite strikes to land.

Is this an appropriate “you mad bro” time?

Joking aside, I recently was trying to build a damage oriented build with more sustain to solo dungeons or other types of random wander moments. Mace and Hammer work perfectly for those situations tied together with symbol heal.

Meshed together a berserker/magi set to maintain good crit chance, utilized a lot of might stacking with battle sigils and crit procs to make up for the lost power somewhat, and layered the healing ticks with symbol heal, vor, and regen.

Not as durable as a full bunker, but that isn’t the intent. Still trying to balance out the damage though, as it is lower in dps by about 300-500 damage in auto attack chains. Also been trying to pick fights in wvw to see how it goes. Stationary symbols never perform well, but wanted to test it out all the same.

Also picked up torch with the mace for the extra damage modifier, burning ticks, and when needed boon stripping (works wonders on karka)

Overall I’m actually pleased with it, and it is suitable for my more solo playstyle, but if you want to do organized dungeons, just run meta.

It is a pretty good burst weapon in pvp due to the heavy hits, but it is slower in dps due to slow attacks.

It works well enough in pve with symbols and mostly stationary combat, but has lower dps with the trade off of the group support via healing proc and regeneration boon.

Generally not needed, it can still be built to do ok damage and assist a less polished group in pve content.

Additionally the aoe block for some fights works better than blinds would on bosses, so again more group utility.

If you like it, rock it, as long as you are comfortable with the lower dps and odd looks from others

Ping your gear, satisfy both parties.

If your group is so streamlined that you need specific stats, then request a ping and if people do not want to comply they can leave and both parties understand each other.

If you joined a zerk group and don’t ping your gear, then be ready to accept a kick and don’t be naive.

For everyone else, this allows them to not be subjected to unwanted scrutiny without permission and let them opt if they want to show gear or not.

As far as damage meters, do your theory crafting, communicate with your peers, and test against consistent targets for time and what not for effectiveness.

Not the perfect answer, but it satisfies the bare minimums of both requests on both sides of the argument.

In an effort to avoid having “healers” they try to not focus on healing or tanking in the game. Yet as you said our class has a lot of healing embedded into it, so it feels like we are against the game mechanics.

Yet, bunker guardians in pvp need that healing power for as much sustain as possible, at the sacrifice of all and any damage. Many guardians feel this is unreasonable, but the rest of the community feels that this is balanced and other classes should follow that structure of all or none with sacrifices.

Additionally any group healing skills often suffer in effect because of that fear of a healing archetype, even though some of those skills you listed have only self sustain capabilities.

There were a lot of posts about healing power coefficients and which skills gain more or less from the stat, and AH/MF/ZB all scale badly and tend to be more offensive sustain type abilities that perform pretty much the same with or without healing power, which helps offensive built specs so they don’t have to sacrifice stats.

Regeneration, Selfless Daring, and Writ of Merciful all scale fairly well with healing power.

For even better effect consider overlapping healing abilities like virtue of resolve, writ of merciful, regeneration, and even mace auto attack. Those abilities combined can get healing per a second into the 1k range for self and group. Which is pretty powerful….AND very useless in PvE, as you will have next to no damage.

WvW and PvP that can be important though, depending on who you run with and how your team is built.

Aedrion.6483:

CMF.5461:

Is unscathed contender worth it? yes or no.

No, it is not.

UC is a trait that makes you drool at the thought of increasing your whole burst by 20%. In reality, this will not happen nearly enough to justify taking it. Since Aegis is popped even by the weakest and fastest of attacks and makes this trait is very unreliable.

I concur with you, but it started a debate apparently and then mild personal attacks heh.

Notice how I was transparent and never claimed to be better than anyone else, but I simply provided information as to how much time and effort I have spent on the guardian class.

I would hope that it shows that I have “some” experience and while tpvp is rated and hotjoins are filled with randoms, it still interacts with the same ruleset as tpvp, the biggest change being organization and fewer people.

If you are done trying to stand taller than me now, and we can go back to my point and not my experience.

Is unscathed contender worth it? yes or no.

I simply ask you contest and debate my words and not my person. If that is not too much to ask.

Did I throw rank status around? I don’t even really play spvp anymore let alone gw2 very much, but I’m secure enough in myself without a rank number by my name so here are my stats for what it’s worth:

I have 1874 hours on guard over 629 days
with 1351 games played as a guard in pvp.
When we had ranks I was Wolf rank so /shrug. I played more than the average player but not as much as the hardcore pvpers.

I will self admittedly vouch I hardly touch tpvp as I never had a team, and solo queue is a joke so I personally wouldn’t brag about that.

74 matches played Tq and 34 matches Sq, whoop de doo.

But yes, I have theory crafted and tried every build out there. I’m not saying your build is bad, but I am saying unscathed sees little to no use. You are not wrong though, it isn’t competing against anything drastically better, so use what you like.

A lot of the big tpvp guards started using purging flames when it got revamped a few months ago when they were still around. It is easy to sub it out for a skill, not saying go full consecrations, but purging flames “will” provide more damage, team utility, and condition cleansing than unscathed contender.

You just have to sacrifice a meditation, probably contemplation of purity as it has the longest cooldown and wont provide as much medi burst healing as JI and smite will.

If you deem that my experience is negligible and you are better than me, then that’s fine too. I’m sorry I tried to contribute.

https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/game/gw2/NcSoft-earnings-1Q-14/first

EU scene has been dying for a while, and most of the serious tourney teams left about 6 months ago both NA and EU, so… slow clap

absolute resolution really?

take your 4 points out of virtues and move them into radiance for a higher crit chance and another 10% damage mod on conditions, or even zeal for power and more damage mods if you are that concerned about dps.

Although apparently you are worried about conditions, which is why you are picking up absolute resolution, 3 conditions every 50 seconds, versus 3 conditions every 28 seconds.

unscathed will get you maybe 1 extra kill every 81 or 50 seconds, but its your build so do what you like.

not really dpsing down that tree anyway, support oriented honestly, but while you go down that tree you could pick up master of consecrations and have faster purging flames cool down to cleanse more conditions more frequently and add some condition damage as extra flavor.

That would provide more utility and effect than unscathed contender if you are determined to go down that tree.

and while I never take it, retaliatory subconscious is not completely horrible to provide some damage back when CCed, but we don’t’ see multi hit power/CC based builds much anymore so meh I guess?

aegis is triggered even through focus shield blocks, one of the major complaints for a while now.

generally unscathed contender is left for wvw gimmick ganking and pve. the rest of pvp has so many sources of damage coming in that you don’t see enough benefit and can’t dodge/blind everything to make it really worthwhile.

just wanted to add my voice to the disappointment at town clothes tonics as well as other various small changes that made no sense over that last patch. Good changes, but then random little bad changes here and there that tarnish things for me.

Give back and expand on town clothes…and personality meters that mean something!

While 15% stamina regen is meh… Does anyone know if it applies to allies as well? Just looking over some trait synergies and that one seemed like interesting support if it works.

Purity of Body
Battle Presence

obal.3218:

Hammer is the best support weapon a guardian has for pve. Other than that the best support they have is blind/vuln spam, consecrations, and aegis. Clerics is probably the worst gear there is and running all tank gear is generally a waste. Aggro in this game is based on a lot of different factors and not just toughness so running a mix of tank and zerk would be a better tradeoff of being able to stay alive and hit harder. As far as shouts go having a full shout bar won’t help the group as much as running the right utilites for the right occasion like retreat mostly, wall/shield when there are projectiles, stability when needed, purge when you need removal or a fire field for might stacking, and bane signet when nothing else is needed. Running the best utilities for the occasion usually means you end up with 1 shout most of the time. Shelter and renewed focus would also be better choices for survival. Something like this would be better support for you and your group http://gw2skills.net/editor/?fVAQJASWlsApUo9CxZI8DVR8gk1Y7+UXAMfu9qYA-TxRBABXp8rS1foZ/B80BAwFAIvHAgZKBBA-e

Just wanted to give a public props to Obal, while he pretty much represents the current meta, he is not above listening to the concerns and wants of people who don’t want to follow it.

Even while he is trying to educate and show why to use setups closer to the meta, he still tries to compromise and provide possible alternatives with fairly honest effort.

Stay classy Obal.

On release, quickness provided a higher attack speed increase and raw power was the primary way of doing damage. This created one of the first dungeon metas with mesmers being “needed” because of the long duration group quickness and really fast damage. People were downing things way faster than the devs intended (nothing has really changed without it honestly).

In PvP it was a sort of CC power burst meta and there were complaints. So it was deemed that quickness was overpowered by the majority because people felt they could not react quick enough. (maybe a l2p moment as we were all really new at the beginning, so now I think the majority of the player base has the tools and skills to handle this now)

Thus they nerfed it so hard no one uses it anymore. The attack speed is not fast enough to warrant the loss of other utilities atm, unless someone finds a new way to integrate it into a build or group, or the devs re-evaluate the ability.

I was having the same problem. I"m really disappointed that they gave up on town clothes and variety that you could get with some simple dyes to each piece.

One consolation is that my town clothes maintained the last dye that I added, so I look unique at least when I use them.

All they needed to do was add “more” styles of town clothes and expand the wardrobe functions to do town clothes slots as well. But they figured no one cared about them so they scrapped it.

If they expanded the function more, I think a lot more would have used it.

Oh well

TLDR: More scaling for more variables beyond local players and more incentives to expand out of the easier zones are needed.

Couple of comments.

The idea of downscaling and “the whole world is endgame” is/was an attempt to allow people, regardless of level, interact with the world anywhere. So leveling up was not supposed to preclude players doing lower level zones and dynamic events. Player perception and to a good part game incentive inhibits players from doing said events except for a few zones.

Most people actually avoid the high level zones such as Orr, and opt to do dynamic events in lower level zones because of ease and efficiency. That part is player perception hindering ourselves from branching out more and keeping the world alive.

The other side is that there really isn’t any reason to branch out due to lack of useful rewards. They try to stem this problem by having daily achievements in various geographical areas or living story events focusing in on various zones every few weeks, but it isn’t enough.

That kind of explains the population problem, as far as difficulty of events (the OP’s other problem) I think they devs could do more to have events scale to zone population as well as proximity population. Additionally I think tracking of success/failure of events could prompt changes in it to encourage more player interaction for less completed events.

They attempt to do that in some areas where NPCs gather together to help push against a more difficulty event, but they are often useless in the overall scheme of things.

Honestly I’m kind of surprised that this thread is still going. Majority of it are the same people high fiveing each other and smack talking the guys cleric build.

Is it worth it to run? To each their own, but wow, this thread is still going?

Some more useful comments toward the bottom at least, and props to you obal for trying to come up with a middle ground for a more diverse player base.

I agree, they are lackluster. I experiment mostly to try to find something new or comparable to what we have now.

Ground effect based attacks are useful in PvP, but it needs to be more threatening than current symbols are. As mentioned before, other classes with ground effects, have them tied with conditions, or are spammable+conditions, as well as they are cast from range.

Guardian’s do not have those abilities, so either symbols need to do redic damage….or have some sort of utility/survival tied to them, to make them more useful than they are now.

Back to zealous blade though, I still feel that dps guardian’s are lacking in survival/build diversity.

Monk’s and AH are the primary forms of self sustainability, but invested so far into the trait lines that it limits what you can do. ZB, was supposed to offer “some” sustain in the form of offensive pressure, but it proves to be not enough.

Maybe if it healed for a % of damage done, and not based on a flat number.

Or as mentioned before, if guardians had a trait that had healing power scale off of power, you could have a lesser gain in sustain in power builds, but you would not make current bunker builds even more bunker-y (if that’s a word?).

I was also messing around with a symbol pve based build, and for that I went into longer symbols, because I agree damage over time/dps adds up. For PvP concentrated burst more often than not helps more, but pressure builds are also needed.

I just didn’t feel the uptime for symbols was enough on mobile fights to warrant longer symbols. I did not try hammer though, so maybe it would come into play more. I simply followed the damage modifiers in the trait lines, 10% symbols, 5% greatsword, 5% mace, so picked up gs/mace.

I’ll try it out, as doing is better than saying.

I was playing it more of a in/out burst with double symbol drops from mace/gs/whirling wrath as applicable.

I did not like the idea of having to complete an auto attack chain for the symbol on hammer, as it was not “on demand” but hammer would give it more consistency, true.

We are kind of derailing the original idea of the thread though which was “Zealous Blade”.

Trying to contribute some without being too argumentative.

I disagree with strength/use of symbols in s/tPvP.

Yes, symbols can hit hard…If your target remains in them for the duration.

Yes conquest seems to promote a stationary style fight, but any experienced person knows when to get off the point if it is inundated with AOE/ground effects. Why stand there and die when you can move off for a few seconds then move back in when it expires.

To add an extra point against guardian symbols in s/tPvP.

The ground effect AEs that we typically see cover a point are done from ranged attacks. Necro wells, Warrior Bow, Ranger Bow/traps, Ele staff?, mesmer staff, engineer grenades, thief bow.

That leaves guardian.

We have a staff symbol….? I have yet to see any herald the dps of staff. Yet I would be pleasantly surprised to see someone make it an offensive weapon.

and

Scepter smite, which distributes damage between all targets in area not simultaneously damages them. Also can miss hits based on size…best for large single targets.

We can even throw in purging flames as it can be ground targeted with traits.

Other than that, guardian abilities require you move into the danger zone and front the damage. Which is why many feel we are lacking in survival when it comes to group fights and zerker speced.

Our mechanics are seemingly adverse to the playstyle suggested with symbols.

On a side note, I have been running zerker symbols with GS/Mace meditation for fun in hot joins and it can surprise people, because most are not expecting damage from guardian symbols.

25/x/30/x/x with 15 points to drop where you like, I tend to just drop them into honor and larger symbols. Again, mobile targets are the death of me.

edit:

forgot to add that the ground effects from other classes leave condition based damage, so it continues to damage after exiting the field, which is where I think guardian symbols are failing, yet no one here I think, believes guardians will be viable in any form of condition play as it is now.

To the comment earlier that “Zeal isn’t suppose to offer sustain”.

In the interest of build diversity, I do think that sustain type mechanics should be peppered around the trait lines with differing flavors of “how” they sustain.

Otherwise you are always forced down the same tree and then trait points become limited to distribute else where.

OR

Current sustain mechanics need to be “more” accessible by bringing them lower down the trees.

Currently we have three-four ways of sustain. AH and MF (trait specific), Writ of Merciful (limited mobility/weapon specific), and Regeneration.

Writ and regen come at the expense of building for healing power, thus severely limiting build diversity through gear selection.

AH and MF are extremely down a tree, thus limiting build diversity through trait points.

Zealous Blade, I feel, was an attempt to give dps guards more sustain within another tree. It is not enough though, which is why anet went so far as to let it scale with healing power a smidgen, to see what they can adjust. Still feels lackluster.

All in all I think all of the traits need to be reorg’ed a bit, but yes I think we ALL need to step back and re-evaluate our opinions on how things “should” be and avoid shoving our opinions in other people’s faces.

https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/professions/guardian/Guide-DPS-Guardian-for-PVE/page/4#post3627662

Whole game has moved away from pure support/tank/anchor type builds and more dps with flavors of support integrated into them.

A lot of good posts here, look for obal’s sticky at the top of the forum for the guardian meta currently.

Survival comes via active skill use with blinds and blocks, and then concentrate on killing things quickly.

the only place that still uses AH is in large cluster fights such as open world zergs and wvw.

Most will see you as a hindrance if you focus on healing in pve.

PvP is a slightly different story, but meta there is bunker guard focusing on team fights and support while holding a point. Your build and playstyle will probably more closely reflect pvp than pve currently.

Arken.3725:

… all i’d like to see is a bit more sustain for those builds outside of bunkering.

Here is where I think we hit the biggest road block.

If we add sustain to the guardian profession, it needs to be in the form of traits that are not viable to obtain at the same time as picking up other “bunker” type traits.

Otherwise you run the risk of making bunker even more of a problem for balance and further pigeon holing us even more.

The other option is to keep sustain where it is at but increase damage potential in one of two ways.

Either increase damage or increase CCs to allow current damage to take full effect.

Most are proponents of increasing CCs to some extent because we are pretty much in agreement that guardian damage is pretty good when set up appropriately.

For dps specs to be more viable in pvp they either have to finish fights quickly or survive fights long enough to do damage potential.

Mass condition spam, ae attacks, and a plethora of incoming CCs and avoidance mechanics have become a detriment for many guardians in trying to be more damage oriented.

So we are left with bunker…but everyone is tired of guardian bunkers…even a lot of guardians themselves.