Guild Wars 2

In todays game its excessively easy to apply conditions for most classes:
Thieves: High condi application, great condi removal with stealth spam, plus high mobility
Warriors: High condi application, high mobility, high self-healing
Mesmers: High condi application, great condi transfer/cleansing, solid in combat mobility, high stealth spam
Rangers: Solid condi cleansing, very high self healing, high mobility and avoidance, longest water field in the game
Necros: Extremely high condi application, high survivability through elite and class mechanic, full condi cleanse every 25 seconds, condi transfer on weapon abilities
Elementalist: Solid aoe condi application, solid condi removal
Engie: High condi application, great condi removal, great survivability
Guard: Group stability, 1 condi, solid condi cleansing but needs at least 30-50 trait points to do so, condi application is based on 4-5 attacks or a burst with a long cd, weapons have little to no condi application.

BTW, this is all based on my experiences in wvw. In PVE mobs don’t avoid your aoe, and SPvP sometimes they have to stand in your aoe to keep a point contested.

Guards have constantly fallen behind with other classes getting buffed, and the class and its weapons need to be reanalyzed and fixed.

I would say hes mad, but………………….

Shield of absorption is solid, binding blade gets doubled up on some targets instead of staggering out to a secondary target just past the closest one, Banish is a long cd single target knockback (don’t get me wrong I love it), but theres much better AOE CC’s out there and we just aren’t on their level.

@ Jericho: What hard CC does a Guard have that is useful to carry in anything bigger than a 1v1?

@ Amins: When I read that I heard Ahrnold’s voice when he played Mr. Freeze.

urieldhynne.2743:

Guardian need range, mobility and softCC

but in…
pve guardian is fine without that
spvp guardian is fine without that
wvw guardian have a problem, unless you only play as zerg boon/condition remover.

Arenanet dont care about wvw. End of history.

True, but giving literally every other class a form of hard CC and living Guards out is poor planning imo. Yes we have walls/rings but those are on long cooldowns and highly situational, and half the time to make these skills work right you have to combine them with a utility to make them worthwhile.

I mean come on, a class gets a FOUR SECOND DAZE because we are Guards…we don’t even have a 1 second daze =/

WvW points and PPT come strictly from population. If you have more players you can zerg down keeps/towers faster and even have players there to defend them. Add in fair-weather players (ones that only come out when the scores are in their favor or stay away when they see a bad score) and its even worse. Zergs hold the ground and take the ground while small mans harass or flank zergs to weaken or kill them. But a small man can only do so much in this game where a zerg can do everything. Until you make wvw less about numbers and more about tactics, population will be king and having servers that have a huge number advantage fighting smaller servers will be really frustrating for both sides.

In Devon’s defense there are skills involved in wvw. Zergs need to maintain a tight group so they can exploit the 5-aoe cap, focus fire so the enemy zerg doesn’t get the bonus, and move quickly around terrain.
Small man is all of those things, plus maximizing individual builds to make the group even stronger, being in the right place at the right time, and never face tanking an enemy zerg. That requires speed and coordination.

A zerg doesn’t require individual skill to be high to be effective, it requires situational awareness more than anything while the small man requires situational awareness and a higher individual skill.

Condi meta is ridiculous right now…and what do we not really have? =P

urieldhynne.2743:

Dynnen.6405:

Weapons (specficially sword 2/3 and scepter 2/3 need to be re-worked imo), Zero hard CCs, only one condi on a moderate application rate, excessively low health pool, and a few others.

Would be great if scepter 2 has an aoe slow. And 1 second more for Scepter 3, idk if more range, maybe the actual range is fine for scepter 3.

Scepter 1 need a complete rework, yes is fast, but come on, only damage without effect? Our only “real” range weapon is a one handed (only 3 skills) with a pretty bad autoattack…

Sword 2 and 3 is fine. Maybe if sword 2 not required a target would be kinda op, because is a blink, not a jump.

Yea, I meant Scepter 1 and 2, not Scepter 2 and 3.

The critical thing Guards can provide is “SYG!” Other than Guards are alright. Other classes have gotten a buffs in the past 4-5 patches that have made them a lot better and Guards still haven’t gotten anything since beta. I would be inclined to say they don’t need it but theres quite a bit of small problems that voltron it into a big problem.

Weapons (specficially sword 2/3 and scepter 2/3 need to be re-worked imo), Zero hard CCs, only one condi on a moderate application rate, excessively low health pool, and a few others.

I love my Guard, but these problems have existed since phase 2 open beta.

Amins.3710:

Sirendor.1394:

Obscure One.4357:

gonna need a couple more to figure it out: WvW 2015!

More likely -> GW2 = WoW in 2015, the way they’re going right now.

The importantly sad thing here is, they would be juuuuust fine w/ this.

I’ve lost all faith and w/ that, comes no support.

F2P FTW. Not getting any more of my $$ for gems.

I’ll log on once a month and go… yep, same kitten. Nothings changed.

Bro..bro…..bro….CU

How about they do something smart for a change at give +1 stacking per defense victory?

There needs to be incentive for defending instead of just zerging around.

colesy.8490:

You feel bad for a class that is basically never nerfed?

And yet I bet you don’t give a kitten about how rangers, eles and mesmers were nerfed in to the ground, do you?

Guess u never played the beta. Guards got nerfed hard through the betas and haven’t been changed since. They were nerfed for the specific reason of ‘they heal or have too much passive healing with way too much damage’…which is exactly what a warrior is currently. GeeGee

Causing shield 4 to daze or stun would be nice. Give us a hard CC for once =P

Ahh, True. It will say “people” instead of “sources” good point =D

Right, Im trying to see if anyone else has found any information on it. I’m saying I’ll believe it when I see it, and hopefully someone has some information from a live stream I missed or something.
EDIT: What Im saying is I don’t have any sources and didn’t get any links. Also I didn’t say “OMG ITS A BIG PATCH FOR GUARDS” Maybe I should have had a better title since people do tend to only read the headlines =P

I’ve heard from multiple people that this patch is gonna be HUGE for Guards and also this patch is going to be more of the same. Anyone got some links they can post about how this next patch is going to be for Guards?

Mace, I’ve been looking for a good looking mace for a long time. Got Sunrise/Juggernaut/Bolt for other specs/builds

Google this: DAoC Realm Rank
=D

Can we get these same opportunity costs for D/P stealth spammers?

Thanks, my search skills are lacking this morning…must get coffee…

=D

Does anyone know if these are getting buffed or changed once ascended weapons come out? Thanks in advance =D

Torment is fine for Guards…you’ve never been harassed by bible thumpers? Now imagine bible thumpers with hammers and swords…come on it fits perfectly

sephiroth.4217:

Dynnen.6405:

Ur right. We should have brought another 10-12 for even numbers, that was dumb of us.

It was even fights till half your group rage quit. I was having fun especially trying out my new build then, would like to thank the ranger who stomped me earlier for switching things up a little.

Even fights? Not even close, lol. Unless you are counting just [run], then you still out numbered us.
EDIT: We had 4 AD, and 1-3 pugs at any given time. So thats 5-7 at most vs your 12-15 at our zone in.

Baited? U mean hiding around the corner and killing a pug once or twice? We died after the ‘zomg we so sneaky’ rush every once and awhile.
Outsmarted? Ur right. We should have brought another 10-12 for even numbers, that was dumb of us.
Also fighting you is about 90% highlight reels, its hard not to make a montage when we’re stomping the kitten outta you. Like basically the entire time outside of our spawn. Remember that 30-40 minutes of continual wiping with you have 3-5 more? Yea, that was fun.

Whoever that mow colonel is…so irrelevant, lol

Its not one thing we are lacking. Its a combination of things that added together that screws us. Yes, we have damage. However if we take the damage we sacrifice toughness or condi removal. Yes we have tankiness, at the sacrifice of everything except moderate condi removal. And we have next to nothing in terms of condition damage. We have to take one thing and then scrounge around for the rest.

Its a swiss cheese situation. Where various lackluster things line up and gives us the Guard. Currently every class does what we can do better or on par; and those classes have something else they bring to the fight thats extremely beneficial. I could rattle off every wvw spec out there for the other classes but you should really see them in action. The only thing that we bring that others don’t is AOE stability and “Guardian Herd” (thats where a group of 3-7 Guards are in a 15-20 man group and just keep everyone with stability and pushes with lines of warding and tons of healing)

I could give 4 kittens about spvp tbh. Thats what is keeping guards from getting the changes they need to everything I mentioned before. Ohh and pve where mobs don’t move, stand in our AOE and we get our “zomg op damage brah.”

Please, please, please, please, fix our class. Our weapons, our lack of conditions, or HP pool, our lack of DPS specs, incoherent trait lines, and severe lack of mobility. A roadmap would be even better, to let us know whats going on. If you’re feeling lazy theres some real good suggestions on these forums. Just throw us a bone please or a roadmap…or a big kitten…just something =/

DPS GUARDIAN?! WHERE?!?!?!

Focus:

4) Blinds, heals, clears conditions, and bounces from enemy to ally. Would like to see this changed to an aoe attack to make it a bit more useful in group fighting.
5) Blast finisher, very high damage, absorbs 3 attacks. Its on a long CD so this ability is pretty solid.

Shield:

4) Protection is a Guard’s bread and butter. And this gives out a lot of it.
5) Knock back, projectile absorber, with a heal. Really good ability, not as strong as other classes that use shield

Torch:

4) This attack is a bit frustrating. The Guard has to be within melee range to apply the burning from the activation, but the Guard can throw the fire for a high damage, decent duration burning attack. Only thing I would like to see is a change is the activation burning spread from 180 range to 300 or higher.
5) Another frustrating attack. Cures conditions from allies, and hits up to 3 targets. I really would like to see this changed to line this ability up with the Ele’s dagger 2. Dagger 2 heals the Ele, but a Guard breathing fire doesn’t cure conditions?

I would love to see some tweaking done to these weapons, especially sword and scepter. I also would like to see some things done to symbols. Other than Staff and Hammer we have no real way of keeping enemies fighting on our ground…on our ground. Chilling effect on symbol has been mentioned as a way to improve this, and I think that would be nice. Also another condition for Guards would be nice as well, possibly even added to symbols…if you want to fight on our ground, it’ll hurt you.

Hammer:

1) Very useful chain attack. Good damage, scales well with power, and applies symbol on 3rd attack. Only thing I would want to see done with this is a small reduction in cast time of the 3rd attack. Its HIGHLY telegraphed and easily dodged.
2) High damage, low CD, blast finisher. Can’t beat mighty blow. Still has some drawbacks, its another telegraph attack and attacking targets down or up hill with it has some problems. Sometimes the attack lands above the target’s head and doesn’t do any damage. I would like to see the same change that Greatsword 3 got applied here to ensure that this ability lands in varied terrain areas.
3) Decent damage, long range, can snare more than one target, low CD. Again a very useful ability.
4) Long distance single target knock back. Highly situational. It saves teammates from enemy stomp attempts and can prevent enemy revive attempts. Also is useful for knocking people off cliffs. =D
5) ‘The Thunderdome’ is one of the best abilities on hammer. Add a judge’s intervention and you’ve got yourself a very strong area denial ability or a strong initiate.

Greatsword
1) Awesome chain attack. I’m glad to see the might duration stack to 5 seconds instead of 3. It will be there if you want to finish another chain attack for the duration of the attacks.
2) Low CD, solid damage aoe, Whirl finisher as well.
3) Another mobility attack. Leap finisher, aoe blind, high damage
4) High damage symbol that applies retaliation. Not much to do to improve this.
5) Very useful ability. Aoe dot damage and can also pull enemies to you. Very useful for stacking enemies for aoe damage.

Staff:

1) ‘The Zerg-prod’ hits up to 5 targets, decent damage on a 1/2 cast timer. Not bad for a support weapon.
2) A very useful utility ability. It deals solid damage as it passes through enemies and lightly heals allies. Detonation does light damage to enemies and strongly heals allies. Not detonating the orb causes the CD to reset so it can be used as an offensive ability, or burst healing ability. I am very impressed with how this attack turned out.
3) Basically the only form of swiftness for a Guard. Its a symbol that does light damage, but is meant to keep people moving.
4) Big heal, 12 stacks of might, fast fast. Very good ability.
5) One of the best abilities in the Guard’s arsenal. Good at keeping enemies nearby, or covering a retreat. Can also be cast on the move which is nice.

I’d like to take a minute to talk about Guard weapons. This post is going to primarily focused on WvW since in PvE nothing avoids your aoes; and in SPvP sometimes people have to stand in your AoE in an attempt to take control of the point. This post is going to discuss the strengths and weaknesses of the weapons and hopefully others out there will weigh in =D

Sword:

1) The auto attack chain on the sword is solid. I would like to see the damage on the 3rd attack around the same damage as the 2nd attack (Yes, I know there are 3 and each one has a chance to crit, but they also have a chance to NOT crit making that argument null).
2) One of the best moves on a Guard weapon is Sword 2. This is because Guards have such little mobility. It applies AOE blind in the area which increases survivability. The only thing I would like to see changed with this is the damage, Guards have so little soft CCs (crippled, chill) that the damage really needs to be there.
3) I think I’ve raged more about Sword 3 than any other attack in the game. Its a projectile attack that has a 600 range, and the light bubble you’re character slashes through absorbs projectiles. So lets be real about this, the projectiles travel 600 range, but tracking is so poor thakittens effective range is more 180-300. If a target is standing still at 600 range most of the projectiles will miss to the left or right of the target. Also the projectiles that Sword 3 shoots isn’t even a projectile, it can be reflected as if it was a projectile but it isn’t a projectile finisher. I’d like to see this reflect projectiles and change the attack to direct damage like Necro Scepter 1.

Mace:

1) Mace’s chain attack is perfect. It hits hard, heals at the end, and only the first two attacks can cleave.
2) Long duration symbol, Regen and damage. Great area control and increases survivability. I’ll mention symbols later on.
3) Blocks one attack, does a strong aoe if it blocks. If not you gain protection and a whirl finisher.

Scepter:

1) Got a nice buff with the 30% speed increase. However there still needs to be some work done to it. If it would work like the 1 skill on trident I think that would be a very welcome change, adding some utility to the weapon and improving its tracking ability. Another ‘projectile’ attack that doesn’t benefit from projectile finisher.
2) High damage, as long as the target does not move and all the attacks land on the target. Not only is it a ground targeted ability, but sometimes attacks don’t land because hes not in the right spot. I would love to see this as a symbol tbh, more utility and usefulness.
3) The counter-argument to changing anything else on Scepter. Its a hard-CC with moderate duration and 1200 range. A strong ability on a frustrating weapon.

Retal is fine. Leave it be in its corner to cry into its beer and remember the good ole’ days. Chilling on symbols would be great. Not only would it prevent enemy damage from getting to you and your teammates, it would allow us to control ground better. Also I think Guards should have torment, maybe even in symbols. If you want to walk on our ground, it’ll cost ya.

@CMF, Warrior buffs have made them just silly. Heres a video =P

Atlas, the reason people have been saying that you’re not knowledgeable about the Guard is because of your poor references about Guard traits and statements so far. Some of them don’t make sense…for example:

“In order to stack Shouts on a Guardian to change Conditions into Boons. You would almost HAVE to stack 3 shouts because the cool downs are 30-35 seconds on the SHORTEST CD shouts.”

With shout CD reduction you have shouts on 24/28/48 second timers. Then when talking about symbol of protection you say:

“[The symbols that heal about 600 HP, not impressed]”

I’m guessing you’re talking about mace, not hammer. And if you are going deep into symbols to use them as healing, then they heal for about 200 a second. Add the regeneration ticks with the symbol of faith and its anywhere from 500 to 650 total healing a second.

Then talking about the tome of courage you say:

“[The tome that roots you in place while you get beat on, or the tome that roots you in place and has short range so you can’t actually heal the group in WvW because they moved away from you? Oh wait, they are the same.]”

The only thing that roots you long enough to ‘get beat on’ is the number 5 ability on each tome. Tome of Courage’s number 5 is a full heal for 5 targets in a 600 range. But the ability Amins was referring to is ‘Heal Area’ which is the number 1 ability on Tome of Courage. That cast time is 3/4 of a second, with no CD, and its as fast as you can lay down the ground target.

Then when talking about Stability…

“[We already covered this, Warbanner, try to keep up]”

24 or 30 second CD, compared to an elite that has a 200-240 second CD, only comes out when allies have fallen, and causes you to lose your weapons while using it. A more accurate comparison would have been balance stance or dolyak signet. These only give stability to the warrior and not nearby allies.

Then your caps lock rant about sanctuary. Yes the heal is not that strong compared to the CD (btw no one takes sanctuary without taking the CD reduction trait 10 points into virtues) Sanctuary’s healing doesn’t all come from the heal itself, it absorbs ranged attacks and you have to have stability to penetrate the dome. Say a longbow ranger starts shooting me and I pop sanctuary, then it absorbs all the rapid fire arrows. It would heal me for 3.1k + the 4-6k rapid fire damage. Its utility akittens finest.

Then it gets comical, and one of the primary reasons its obvious you don’t know wtf is going on:

“- 80% Swiftness uptime + Light Field for Condition Removal

[You didn’t quote an ability here]"

Really? You couldn’t glean what he was talking about here? There are only 3 ways a Guard gets swiftness, 2 of them are shouts, and one…well holy kitten it is a symbol thats a light field. Since you missed a chance to troll him here and did try to troll him with the ‘try to keep up’ comment about war banners its obvious you had no idea he was talking about staff 3 ability. And since no one uses Retreat! ever, and hardly uses Save Yourselves! it blows my mind that you missed that.

Also you don’t mention anything about the dodge roll. Lemme help you out real fast and compare it to warrior shouts. Since you tested it we’ll say Warrior shouts with full healing gear heals for 2400 and Guards heal at around 2k with full healing gear. With shout reduction a warrior can get a full 3 shouts of 2400 healing every 24 seconds while a Guard can dodge 5 times in that time, or 7 times with vigor. Guard wins in this category, maybe thats why you left it alone.

“[See notes on Banner of Tactics above, also +170 Power from the Warrior traits.]”

How exactly does power help out with keeping someone alive? Toughness sure as hell does, but I’m missing the power comparison.

While I agree that warriors are really really strong right Guards are in no means hurting in the support department. All of those things that Amins mentioned are true, and you can tell when a Guard is missing from the group. Warrior’s strengths have come from the last 4 patches of constant buffing and the huge buff banners got months ago. Warriors may have really strong burst healing, but they can’t compare to protection/burst/HoT that guards can give. But you are right, Guards do need to get some changes done to them. Weapons need to be re-evaluated (scepter/sword, and we need a condi application weapon) only 1 condition, excessively low healthpool, and forced into taking a lot of defensive traits/gear just to stay alive are just a few of the minor problems that add up to a big ugly one.

Last point. Is it that hard to look up on a gw2 database or look at your own Guard to see the CDs/skills/traits and understand what someone is talking about in a debate? =P

Hopefully the devs will make some changes to the traits soon. A ‘road-map’ would be awesome to have on plans for the Guard. As it stands right now other classes can do what a Guard does, only better.

They’ve said in interviews that Guards aren’t supposed to be able to move around a lot, but defend the ground around them well. What usually happens with a class thats good at holding ground is they can keep enemies fighting near the ground with hard/soft CCs. We have mediocre soft CC right now unless we activate an excessively long CD elite. And even then a warrior can hard CC with a hammer on a 7 second CD. Heres an idea, make the Tomes weapons instead of elites =P

Whats the use of being able to hold ground if you can’t keep someone from just flying away at the drop of a hat (stealth spam, leap spam, low cooldown charges/leaps)? Yes traits need work, and I like most of the suggestions you made, but I’d say their weapons, base HP/armor, lack of buffs to clearly lackluster abilities need work first. Unfortunately for us we aren’t part of the development process.

Comparing the changes to other classes to the changes made to Guards is like asking how much a Red Wood has grown in the past year. Nothing much has changed except some minor things such as symbols and further nerfing of spirit weapons (because they were so OP ya know?)

On a heavier note, keep your head down and get back safely. The last month I spent in the sandbox felt 3 times longer than it actually was =P

My main problem right now with Guardian is that nearly every other class has gotten a HUGE amount of love since the massive nerfs that it received in beta.

Scepter needs to be fixed…just fix it. Scepter 1 still hardly hits in pvp and doesn’t count as a projectile finisher. So why exactly should it be a projectile? Make it a direct damage like necro dagger, or better yet change it to a direct damage that has a 180 range explosion on it that does torment or burning. Scepter 2’s damage is like a miniature meteor shower with mediocre damage, and scepter 3 is good (could be a 12 second CD instead of 15 imo)

Sword 2 has a 10 second cooldown and blinds with nearly no damage. Why is this? I’m guessing because guardians are apparently supposed to have zero movement whatsoever and since this provides a ‘huge’ amount of movement they felt justified in cutting all damage to it. Sword 1’s 3rd chain needs to have its damage fixed as well, only move in the game that degrades in damage as it moves higher in the chain. Sword 3…mother flippin sword 3. Its great in pve and has a pseudo use in utility (Sry I didn’t use Sword 3 to stop the unload from a thief and used dodge instead) but in pvp/wvw its complete garbage. Change it to direct damage that isn’t a projectile and it reflects projectiles so instead of saying “I’ll just dodge roll and heal after the roll” you’ll say “I’ll reflect that back in your face you kitten”

Another is the fact that we HAVE to go nearly purely defensive in pvp/wvw. We have garbage health pools, armor doesn’t mean anything anymore, and next to no mobility. I would love to test out some signets, but I can’t because I have to have my utility skills focused on keeping me alive or its one of the only ways I have any mobility.

Guardians need more ways to snare. Yes we can control the ground we fight on decently enough (unless someone has stability) but we need ways to keep people ON the ground. Guardians have ZERO stuns, I’m guessing its because the thieves stole them from us. This doesn’t make sense at all. We have no way to apply cripple, stun, or chilled unless we trait into it. What we can do is apply immobilized, but everyone else does it much better.

Why should someone even play a Guard when warriors control ground better, we do very weak damage unless the target sits in our AOEs, we can only apply one damaging condition, and everyone else has much higher mobility than we do unless we put everything into mobility and 4 classes will still have more than us with just 1 or two traits or a weapon choice. Its like the devs change something, but don’t move it to where it needs to be because ‘we don’t want Guards to be OP’ or something.

I’d have a lot more to say about traits but I’m about to go wvw. For what the OP said about traits I agree. They need to be re-worked and those are some good steps in the right direction without a whole lot of “wouldn’t it be cool if this did that?” So…strong work OP.

Congrats on the mass murder RG and company. Gonna be interesting to see how the RG masses are able to deal with bomber small mans in CU, hehehe

Expansion of the game types.

Creating your own maps.

Anything else?

How about if u take damage in stealth, it drops stealth? Like every other MMO in existence.

Gonna need quite a few guardians to paint an entire zerg with retal…

Nah Nikola I’m in your boat. It’d have been nice if they would have copy/pasted DAoC into this game. Lots of small things wrong and a few very large ones. Ohh well, only 8 months till CU internal testing =P

Nikola, considering that you’ve posted quite a few things about DAoC saying things in it worked and things here didn’t , I’m not sure what you mean by they are lucky they never heard or played it.

Its crazy how much of the wvw population hasn’t played or even heard of DAoC =*(

They need to balance out the downed states.

Downed State 1) Damage
Downed State 2) Hard CC
Downed State 3) Class specific ability that does not prevent a stop, but slows down someone stomping you. Things like thief/warrior 3 should be replaced.
Downed State 4) heal

You currently have some classes than can prevent up to two stomp attempts and some that can hardly prevent even one attempt. I’m not the biggest fan of downed state since the revive ca kitten o high, but if it was balanced I could live with it.

Corteas = ex-Midgard DAoC player right?

Make it like the tome of wrath 1. Instead of ground targeting it Auto-casts on target, hits up to 3 nearby targets and burns for 1 second. U’d have to slow down the attack speed obviously, but it would give it more utility and make it a condi weapon since we dont have a primary that fills that role.

I’d love to see a main-hand of ours that actually applies our only condi =P

Fairly sure no one is ok with this =P

I thought you might need a dose of reality, especially since you’ve taken the trolling beyond to far. Saying you’re going to beat someone irl, talking slander about someones wife, and then other people defending that should get you banned. Its a PR win/win for Anet. They’ve already gotten your money since theres no subscription, and they get to rid the gaming community of people like you.

PS. Kevin did get in touch with Gab and is distancing himself from teviospy and the rest of the people on the forums going after my family. Thank you for that Kevin.