Guild Wars 2

Since no one ever goes 30 points into arms, to balance out the traits this should be implemented.

“Kiss The Rings!” – Heal, Utility, and Elite skills can now use any signets; any amount of times. Since you have two hands you get double the effectiveness as well. This would be in line with Burst Mastery since it also has two mechanics to it.

oZii.2864:

Disagree with this there are already plenty of suggestions running around that attempt to remove the action from “action mmo”. Vigor uptime nerf is hitting soon which is more action being nerfed. If this keeps going we could just spreadsheet math everything and already have the outcome of a engagement figured out like we are playing WOW.

Running away from a fight like a giant kitten constantly isn’t action. Risk vs. Reward is action, combat that forces you to make choices due to this Risk vs. Reward idea is action.

This is a nerf to not only our survivability but also our healing. I wonder if Anet will take that into consideration…probably not since the retal nerf butchered a significant part of our damage and they didn’t change anything about Guardian damage mechanics after that.

Strong work Anet, strong work…

Cygnus.6903:

Dynnen.6405:

I could write a thesis on how stealth in this game is broken from its foundation up. Zero risk-vs-reward involved. Its all reward. Plus when a thief hides in stealth house they usually heartseeker away at nothing, which is a leap finisher.

The reason I don’t mention stealth is because it will never be fixed. However balancing movement for the rest of us that don’t have a spamable leap finisher, or low-cd get away would be a nice thing to have for the next 3 months.

I disagree. Stealth is fine. Playing a thief against any half decent player is hard. In WvW at least. Off course, ganking mediocre players is easiest when playing thief. But who cares about that.

For the sake of argument, let’s say stealth is broken. Saying stealth can never be fixed and should therefore be left alone is such a weak argument, I can write a thesis about it. And again, why nerf mobility? Give the other classes better escapes also.

To be sure, we are dividing the classes in two groups, one with good, and one without good escaping mechanics, right?

So, the good ones:

Warrior
Elementalist
Engineer
Thief
Mesmer

Bad:
Necro
Guardian
Ranger

That leaves only three classes to ‘fix’ when it comes to mobility.

Or am I missing something here?

Well, that would require them to admit that theres something wrong with mobility, and to be honest I don’t think they’ve even thought about it. Especially considering things like PU, Shadow’s Embrace/Rejuvination, healing signet/adrenal heal can easily be combined with mobility and give stupid survivability. However specific classes have a ton, have a little, or next to nothing.

Deimos Tel Arin.7391:

Dynnen.6405:

balancing movement for the rest of us that don’t have a spamable leap finisher, or low-cd get away would be a nice thing to have for the next 3 months.

i read that as:

hunter: “kitten! the fox is too fast! the fox ran away before i could beat it to death with my stick!”

so the hunter complained to the skies and hope some great powers up there would hear the complains and somehow make foxes run slower.

Balefire.7592:

I don’t mind leaving things as they are, provided other classes get escapes too.
Why should my Necro have to sit and eat leaps, but fail to catch a running Warrior? I have a gap closer that won’t do jack all if it misses. I want free movement – And I know Necros were supposed to have bad movement, but Warriors were supposed to have mediocre cleansing, so meh.
By the logic posted here, give my Necro some leaps/dashes/etc, then we’ll see how many Warrior’s are happy with “their prey [getting] away.”

rocks paper scissors.
warriors do not have death shroud, minions, etc.
play other professions if you wish to escape.

And I read this as: I love having my I get out of jail free card built into my class because my alt+F4 doesn’t work anymore! Also I’m a forum troll that has 69 pages worth of posts!

Cygnus.6903:

Dynnen.6405:

So a couple of classes should be able to escape from 95% of their fights without having to have any risk vs reward built into their class?

Then why are we not talking about stealth?

In WvW, you almost never get a fair fight when roaming. It’s either 1vX or Xv1. The smart ones spec to be able to escape (*). If you have to escape from a Xv1, your opponent should not be disappointed, it’s just some WXP. If you escape from 1vX, your opponent was a puss to begin with.

*So why don’t all classes have good escape mechanics? Who knows. But why are you not trying to fix that?

I could write a thesis on how stealth in this game is broken from its foundation up. Zero risk-vs-reward involved. Its all reward. Plus when a thief hides in stealth house they usually heartseeker away at nothing, which is a leap finisher.

The reason I don’t mention stealth is because it will never be fixed. However balancing movement for the rest of us that don’t have a spamable leap finisher, or low-cd get away would be a nice thing to have for the next 3 months.

Deimos Tel Arin.7391:

Noliver.1475:

they were intended as gap closers… thus the damage..

If they are designed to be escapes there will be no dmg assigned. Like Shadow step

they are designed as leap skills.
intended to close the gap,
or to attempt an escape (with auto targeting turned off)

nothing wrong here.

stop complaining.
accept the fact that you are incapable of snaring the target effectively.

So a couple of classes should be able to escape from 95% of their fights without having to have any risk vs reward built into their class?

Deimos Tel Arin.7391:

Dynnen.6405:

Charge, Heartseeker, Leap of Faith, savage leap, monarch’s leap, etc, etc, etc…these really need to be changed to be used at a target, would fix a lot of mobility issues in wvw.

all of these skills are working as intended.
there is nothing wrong.
there are no mobility issues in WvW.

you do not come here to whine and complain because you failed to put down some one in WvW. would you kindly please accept the fact that you do not deserve that kill in the first place.

killahmayne.9518:

Any class can do “a ton of burst” when they trait for it or go full zerker. Axe is actually very weak if you don’t go nearly full zerker. Eviscerate has a long animation, easily telegraphed, is hampered highly by movement impairing conditions and if it doesn’t crit it hits like wet noodle. They are also easily kited and their DPS is unreliable. Warriors also got “nerfed” when they had 30% burst damage reduced to 3% burst dmg in their traitline.

Nerfing doesn’t have to mean just outright putting a class or a skill into the dumpster. It is just a specific term for a change or a tweak indicating whether they are weakening something, or a buff which is to strengthen something, in order to achieve the desired balance.

You’re acting like the warrior is only trying to chase people down with an axe only in their mainhand and no utilities or traits. Dogged march? Cleansing Ire? Top tier HP pool? Adrenal Healing? Healing Signet? ZZzz…z….zzzzzzzz….

And that ‘nerf’ you got to your 30% damage was a change. It went to 30% CD reduction in burst skills, and the damage went to burst mastery which started at 10%, then went to 7%. A decent example of how to balance…Now here is a great example of how NOT to do balancing, just check the warrior section of the update: https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/info/updates/Game-Update-Notes-June-25th-2013/first#post2339673

Huge buffs, massive changes, no scaling in ‘balancing’ what-so-ever. This was the patch where warriors went from having to have a brain to be good to the emergence of hammer trains in wvw, hambow, and various other builds.

Anywho, back on topic since that we’ve come to the end of the ‘warriors need balancing’ debate. Leap skills need a target to keep mobility in the game balanced.

killahmayne.9518:

Dynnen.6405:

killahmayne.9518:

Dynnen.6405:

Oozo.7856:

Chaba.5410:

Funny thread. I like when skills are able to be used both defensively and offensively so please don’t make this kind of change. It gives me a choice in playstyle.

But I do laugh at the warriors who always run away. If you emote laugh at them, they usually come back to fight.

You would still be able to use the leaps defensively in the same way that guardians use their ports defensively. You switch targets to a target that gets you out of the kill zone.

It just requires more awareness of surroundings and targeting skills, but sometimes there are no good escape options. As it should be.

How dare you suggest that a warrior should be forced to be aware of their surroundings. Anet is trying to take that out of warrior, didn’t you see the 6.5 months of buffs that they got to their traits that activate passively?

Yet axe = nerfed, mace = nerfed, hammer = nerfed, longbow = nerfed, HF and BP = moved from adept to grandmaster, Unsuspecting foe = nerfed. Warriors were buffed for good reason. It is only because warrior got sustain that allowed them to be viable in tPvP play that people are now complaining about mobility.

6 and a half months of buffs with zero balancing isn’t called buffing. Its called a design mistake. Hammer = still stupid strong, Bow = still stupid strong, axe = still stupid strong (gotta get through them autoattacks brah), mace = still a ton of CC. Unsuspecting foe being moved is called BALANCE, not NERF. Learn your terminology before you start talking out of your kitten .

I mean…DO YOU EVEN HAMBOW?!

So, using your exact same logic when warriors were at the bottom of the barrel when PvP was concerned, they aren’t called buffs it is called balance. All these weapons you mention by themselves aren’t even stupidly strong as you say. If so then I can name many other weapons that fit that category. And seriously how many axe warriors do you see in WvW or PvP if it was stupidly strong? The DPS from it got moved to the last auto. Mace, uhh yeah, stopped being used so much when they added a longer cast time, moving unsuspecting foe and fixing the paralyzation sigil.

And are you really that dense? Seriously? Balancing and nerfing aren’t mutually exclusive terms. Balance IS the reason for nerfing. I think you need to learn a bit about terminology.

Axe/shield – GS glass warriors still do a ton of burst and have great escape, so…yea. “Nerfing” is what happened to Guards in the beta. Moved from the top HP tier to the bottom. “Balancing” would have been moving it to mid tier, then adjusting from there.

The reason ‘nerfing’ term came into existance is because post DAoC MMO companies think its perfectly OK to have balance patches 3-6 months at a time. So they nerf most things, and balance some others. Instead of having balance patches every 2-3 weeks.

‘Balancing’ is associated with minor tweeks and changes until you get it as close to correct as possible. Instead you have what happened to D/D ele during its massive nerf, and Guardian when it got a huge nerf each major beta test prior to launch. By all means lets continue this ‘shaving’ idea when it comes to balancing, but it needs to happen every 2-3 weeks, not 3-4 months.

killahmayne.9518:

Dynnen.6405:

Oozo.7856:

Chaba.5410:

Funny thread. I like when skills are able to be used both defensively and offensively so please don’t make this kind of change. It gives me a choice in playstyle.

But I do laugh at the warriors who always run away. If you emote laugh at them, they usually come back to fight.

You would still be able to use the leaps defensively in the same way that guardians use their ports defensively. You switch targets to a target that gets you out of the kill zone.

It just requires more awareness of surroundings and targeting skills, but sometimes there are no good escape options. As it should be.

How dare you suggest that a warrior should be forced to be aware of their surroundings. Anet is trying to take that out of warrior, didn’t you see the 6.5 months of buffs that they got to their traits that activate passively?

Yet axe = nerfed, mace = nerfed, hammer = nerfed, longbow = nerfed, HF and BP = moved from adept to grandmaster, Unsuspecting foe = nerfed. Warriors were buffed for good reason. It is only because warrior got sustain that allowed them to be viable in tPvP play that people are now complaining about mobility.

6 and a half months of buffs with zero balancing isn’t called buffing. Its called a design mistake. Hammer = still stupid strong, Bow = still stupid strong, axe = still stupid strong (gotta get through them autoattacks brah), mace = still a ton of CC. Unsuspecting foe being moved is called BALANCE, not NERF. Learn your terminology before you start talking out of your kitten .

I mean…DO YOU EVEN HAMBOW?!

jihm.2315:

as a class that cant damage properly, and as a heavy wearer we should of being at least mid tier at HP.
i accept that we need allies around us to function properly and that we have a supporting role.
but look at the warriors, they have miles better damage, they deal better with conditions they have better mobilty and there HP is massive.
after all this why guardians still have the lowest HP in game?

Guards have low HP due to knee-jerk nerfs during the three major beta events. They didn’t have as much damage as a warrior does now, no where near the self healing, and Guardians were still nerfed really hard. The only thing they had comparable to warriors was HP and they moved it to bottom tier…Its unfortunate that such design choices were made in the beta before people knew how to fight Guardians.

Maesk.8753:

Yeah, no. Take your badness elsewhere.

Thats an angry thief right there, lulz

woeye.2753:

Distaste.4801:

I would pay them money if they postponed the last 3 story arcs for the feature patch. It’s very telling about the state of the game when balance changes are worth way more to a lot of people than the “story” content. How long does it really take to get some tweaking done to some classes? Most of it is just changing some numbers in a database/formula. I’d say they spent time testing to make sure the changes were balanced but just look at the current balance that they’ve “tested”. The worst part is that it will have been 4 months since the last underwhelming balance patch and it will still be a huge letdown. I have yet to hear of anything in the feature patch that warrants it being it’s own patch. Everything from ferocity, sigils/runes, class balance, etc are all things that SHOULD be put in alongside story content. Every other MMO developer can do it, why can’t ArenaNet?

Because for those kind of changes you need software developers. People who actually can write code. Those type of employees are much more expensive than content creators. This is especially a problem in a F2P game where most of the money comes from the item shop (aka gem store). And it is even more a problem in GW2 where PvP doesn’t generate any income worth mentioning.

Actually gemstore purchases go to NCSoft, and they decide where the money goes. So grats! You’ve been funding a spammy, gimicy, wow player-poaching game called Wildstar!

Yoh.8469:

Something just occurred to me.
We know that Chill causes 66% movement and cooldown speed reduction, which is pretty powerful.

However, Thieves don’t have cool downs on their weapons because of Initiative, so doesn’t this give their weapon skills immunity to that part of the condition?

So shouldn’t they get some sort of penalty instead, like a reduction on Initiative gain?

Discuss.

Anet devs have said time and time before that ‘initiative is the same as cooldowns’

Oozo.7856:

Chaba.5410:

Funny thread. I like when skills are able to be used both defensively and offensively so please don’t make this kind of change. It gives me a choice in playstyle.

But I do laugh at the warriors who always run away. If you emote laugh at them, they usually come back to fight.

You would still be able to use the leaps defensively in the same way that guardians use their ports defensively. You switch targets to a target that gets you out of the kill zone.

It just requires more awareness of surroundings and targeting skills, but sometimes there are no good escape options. As it should be.

How dare you suggest that a warrior should be forced to be aware of their surroundings. Anet is trying to take that out of warrior, didn’t you see the 6.5 months of buffs that they got to their traits that activate passively?

Josh Davis.6015:

The above is what we were referring to on the livestream with ‘feature build’. As I mentioned in my post on the PvP forums earlier today, previewing something on Friday and releasing it on the next Tuesday would give us an incredibly small amount of time to react to feedback – and that wouldn’t be fair to you.

React to feedback? Hehehehehe

Mosharn.8357:

yes make them require target then they will be completly useless!

9/10 times rush/bullsrush other gap closers will bug if target moves a little. So doing this will make mobility skills insta death button.

If you gap close at someone, you’re still closing the gap even if the damage doesn’t land. I’d rather have Warrior GS 5 hardly hit me but still close the gap with me, instead of the warrior using it to escape from a fight all the time.

Kyon.9735:

I guess this suggestion originated from the warrior mobility balance thread. Leap skills are meant to be Gap Closers but instead they’re being used as escape tools.

Take a closer look at Ride the Lightning nerf, it’s supposed to be a gap closer but was used to escape or reset the fight instead so it got nerfed. I don’t see a reason why Warrior’s Rush or other leap/“mobility” skills shouldn’t be nerfed as well. People insist that it won’t work because of lag/travel time/bugs/slow animation but hey RtL is still as buggy as hell but they went on with the nerf. They can’t make an excuse that they were able to do it on one class but can’t on others.

Long story short; give some kind of penalty if the skill doesn’t hit anything to make it fair with Ride the Lightning. Else, remove the 2x CD penalty of RtL and think of another “balance fix” for all leap/mobility skills. So you don’t necessarily need a target and you still get to use leap skills as an escape mechanism but is not as exploitable anymore.

Dumb kittening thing about ride the lightning is it doesn’t take into account someone dodging. If you don’t hit because the player is smart, you still get super punished because it was used as an escape tool for so long rather than just punished. Certain classes have next to no risk vs reward, and some are loaded down with it so much that its near crippling.

Charge, Heartseeker, Leap of Faith, savage leap, monarch’s leap, etc, etc, etc…these really need to be changed to be used at a target, would fix a lot of mobility issues in wvw.

If 95% of your player base go to 1 heal after it was buffed, something went wrong. Also if the population of wvw goes from 10% warrior to about 30%…something went wrong =P

xFireize.6318:

I’m not judging your scepter and focus “Real Talks” because I haven’t used them enough to review them, but the rest is pretty much “Buff this buff that for no real reasons. Too long cooldown this too long cooldown that. I want this I want that because other classes have this and that.”

Dynnen.6405:

Block attacks for 3 seconds. At the end of the three seconds apply protection to you and 5 party members for each attack blocked, 6 seconds max, 600 range.

I mean, seriously?

The only thing I can compare to in effectiveness are other classes that have the same weapons. The weapons we have are very effective on most other classes while on ours they are either lackluster, do mediocre damage, or don’t track/hit that often. As for the shield thing I was looking for another block to throw in, someone mentioned aegis application on the Guardian forums that was a better suggestion but I couldn’t find it. And also when compared to warrior or engie we dont have anywhere close to the amount of block/invuln that these classes do, while at the same time they can offer more healing (blast finisher spam in healing turret, and shouts if they run healing shouts)

Maybe I am whining, but I’ve played this game for a long time spending 90% of it roaming in small man. I get to see where these weapons fail and where they are effective. Most of the time these weapons are moderately to very effective when paired with other abilities, while other classes’ weapons usually function well on their own.

Jax.5261:

I don’t agree with pretty much anything here, it has a gigantic negative influence on pvp and I don’t see any this helpful. Sorry? I guess.

Thats fine, although I don’t know what you mean by a negative influence. Do you at least agree that the guardian weapons are largely ineffective against a target that isn’t running straight at you or standing still? Because that was the point I was trying to make.

@xsquared: Hammer isn’t fine. Shaving 1/4 second off the attack timer wouldn’t give Guards perma-protection, plus the fights move out of the symbols so quickly anyway. Even when I was trying out a symbol build with expanded range on symbols the fights hardly stayed in them for the full duration. Also RoW requires the person to run into it for them to be CCed. So its an area denial ability, not really a CC.

@ nicknamenick: This is for Guardian weapon mechanic discussion, but I will mention the warrior longbow. Warrior longbow has much better tracking than scepter, its leaps and bounds better. The nice thing about longbow is that the other abilities on it actually work right, where as scepter’s abilities really don’t…

@ Kumu Honua: Just because there are a lot of Guards out there that use hammer isn’t a reason not to fix it. Shaving off that 1/4 extra time of cast for the auto attack chain on hammer will not give Guards perma-protection, fights move around too much plus symbols aren’t worth putting points into since you can’t keep a fight locked into them. The hammer really magnifies the problem with Guardian’s inability to keep people in melee range and I think the changes I mentioned will give them better chase ability. There are 7 classes in the game that have cripple on their weapons, 1 that doesn’t. There are 4 classes that have direct application of chill on their weapons, so I don’t think chilled is all that prevalent. Giving symbols the ability to chill will allow the Guardian a little measure of control in a fight by keeping people in it. Plus combining the traits will give Guards a reason to go into the worst trait line for the Guardian. Also leaving banish as it is really hampers our CC. We have so little of it and this would be a perfect place to add it. You bring up an interesting point with the cliffs however, its one of the things I dislike about the Guard, and it follows this formula.

X ability is garbage or decent by itself. But X ability + Y ability = Good ability.

As far as your comments on scepter…I just don’t get it. Yes, its lackluster but we shouldn’t have un-reliable damage based on poor weapon design. For scepter 2, I’m not sure you know how it works. The entire area that is the aoe point doesn’t get hit with the fists flying in the air, its a portion of it that gets attacked. So you can literally walk around inside of it and avoid most of the damage thanks to the RNG. And for scepter 3, look at other things that apply immobilize. Look at their cooldown, if they are AOE, and what other conditions they apply. Ours is the worst.

This one is for symbols. These comments are coming from the idea of wvw since pve mobs don’t move and spvp has hampered the evolution of Guardian with its focus on point defense.

First we need to discuss the traits. There are currently 5 different traits that improve you symbols spread out over 2 trait lines. These need to be combined. Writ of Exaltation and Persistence need to be combined as either a adept or master trait. Symbolic Power and Exposure need to be combined in the 25 point talent and a new 15 point zeal trait should be created that adds chill to your symbols. This would not only give us some soft CC, but add some much needed customization and utility to symbols.

This one is for the staff. These comments are coming from the idea of wvw since pve mobs don’t move and spvp has hampered the evolution of Guardian with its focus on point defense.

Staff 1: The ‘zergling prod’. If anyone has a suggestion on how to improve this, please post it. Other classes’ staff 1 attacks are insanely better than what we have…so post away!

Staff 2: Low cooldown, extremely high utility ability. If you need some extra damage on target, don’t detonate the orb and you can throw it again in 2.5 seconds. If you need some extra healing, blow it up for some. Solid ability.

Staff 3: I’m still not sure what to think about this ability with the recent change to how it applies swiftness. But if you stand in it you get quite a bit of swiftness and if you’re already on the move with swiftness you get an extra 4 seconds when it pulses, so theres some give and take with it.

Staff 4: This should be able to cast on the move so that when the battle line changes your heal/might isn’t wasted on nothing because you couldn’t keep up with the fight.

Staff 5: Holy cooldown batman…Please shave off 5 seconds from this.

This one is for the torch. These comments are coming from the idea of wvw since pve mobs don’t move and spvp has hampered the evolution of Guardian with its focus on point defense.

Torch 4: The activation needs to be properly explained in the tooltip for one. Also when you initially cast it, the ability should have a wider area that it burns. 120 is a joke. It needs to be 180-300. Also when you activate torch 4 and throw the fire at someone the target should get direct damage and burning, and anyone around the target that was hit should get 2 seconds of burning. Projectile speed is perfect, I have no idea why scepter 1’s attack isn’t like this.

Torch 5: Needs to apply burning per pulse…I mean you’re literally breathing fire on someone. It should also cure condis on yourself, elementalist water dagger 2 heals the elementalist as well as allies, I don’t see why this doesn’t cure condis on the Guardian as well.

This one is for the shield. These comments are coming from the idea of wvw since pve mobs don’t move and spvp has hampered the evolution of Guardian with its focus on point defense.

Shield 4: Mediocre damage, long cooldown, protection applier. Like the focus this cooldown is way too long for what it does. It also doesn’t really do what a shield is supposed to do. Here is what I think it should be changed to. Block attacks for 3 seconds. At the end of the three seconds apply protection to you and 5 party members for each attack blocked, 6 seconds max, 600 range. Not only would you be able to protect yourself from attacks, but you’d be able to provide support to allies. If you felt like you could also add a small damage explosion to give it some more utility, similar to what it does now.

Shield 5: Knock back, instant cast, and a heal. Again…insanely long cooldown for what it does. Lower it by 5 seconds.

This one is for the focus. These comments are coming from the idea of wvw since pve mobs don’t move and spvp has hampered the evolution of Guardian with its focus on point defense.

Focus 4: Long cooldown, low regen duration, blinding attack. Its got a lot of utility and cures a condi per bounce. But the cooldown is insane. It should be around 20 seconds, and to be honest a Guardian should be able to target a friendly player, and cast it on the friendly player to initiate the bounce. Because if the target is at 900 range and running from you while you cast it will miss and the ability will be wasted for nearly half a minute. Ohh and it actually tracks! Why sword 3 can’t do this or scepter 1 can’t do this…I don’t know.

Focus 5: Blocks three attacks, blast finisher at the start, high damage if it explodes…but has an insanely longer cooldown than a lot of utilities abilities. It needs to be shortened by 5-10 seconds.

This one is for the mace. These comments are coming from the idea of wvw since pve mobs don’t move and spvp has hampered the evolution of Guardian with its focus on point defense.

Mace 1: This is probably one of our best chain attacks. Solid damage and a heal on the end. The only improvement to this would be if the attack on the end of the chain was PBAOE and the heal was a larger, maybe 180 instead of 120.

Mace 2: A regen light symbol that does solid damage on a nice cooldown. Again, I’ll cover symbols later in our program.

Mace 3: High damage aoe after you block and if you don’t a whirl finisher that gives protection. Solid ability.

Heres my problem with mace…there is ZERO CC. None what-so-ever. In every other MMO the mace has always been a weapon that dazes, stuns, or does high damage with some sort of armor penetration. But following along with our severe lack of CC this makes sense. This would be fine if we had CC somewhere else and the warrior class didn’t have 2 hard CCs and a 3 second block that will keep blocking if you aren’t facing a target on MH mace, and an aoe knockdown on offhand mace…ohh and warrior auto-attack cleaves. Compared to the only other class that can use a mace, ours needs some improvements, mainly CC.

This post is for the scepter. These comments are coming from the idea of wvw since pve mobs don’t move and spvp has hampered the evolution of Guardian with its focus on point defense.

Scepter 1: This attack is the tip of the frustrating iceberg that is the scepter. Its slow, its a projectile (but not a finisher), doesn’t track well, mediocre damage, and isn’t a chain attack like necro (chain attack + condis), mesmer (chain attack that continues even without a target that creates a clone at the end of the chain), or elementalist (no chain attack, but applies condis and has 4 attunements). This doesn’t make any sense when looking at other classes abilities on scepter 1. It needs a major rework, it requires so much rework in my opinion that I don’t even have a suggestion for it.

Scepter 2: An ‘aoe’ RNG attack that hardly hits. The little smite fists that attack have a pretty good chance of missing if the target is slightly out of the center. The fists that attack in the area need to have a 5 target aoe cap so that it can do some aoe, and make it a symbol. The RNG needs to be taken out of the attack, its insanely frustrating. The attack needs to be cleaned up.

Scepter 3: A medium range, medium duration root that does mediocre damage and an insanely long cooldown. I think this cooldown is still this long because for some reason having the slowest class in the game means that we should have long cooldown CC as well. The cooldown should be lowered to 15 seconds, maybe even 12 seconds considering other classes ability to just about spam root abilities.

Real Talk: A post meant to outline the problems with the Guardian, this one is for the hammer. These comments are coming from the idea of wvw since pve mobs don’t move and spvp has hampered the evolution of Guardian with its focus on point defense.

Hammer 1: Auto attack chain needs to be faster. Its been said on the forums by non-devs that its slow because it applies a symbol to the ground, but I haven’t been able to find a dev post confirming that. It needs to be faster, 1 second cast time is plenty long considering that most people will get out of the symbol before it can do any serious damage. And since you need to stick to your target you as the Guardian will be out of it as well, sometimes before the 2nd pulse. Symbols I will discuss in another Real Talk later in our program

Hammer 2: Low cooldown blast finisher, good damage with a 300 movement attached. Really solid ability unless you are using it up or down a slope. The ‘explosion’ on hammer 2 does not go up or down on the X Axis. Instead the damage goes out. So if you are trying to hit an Asura down hill, or the leap doesn’t track up or down the slope well, you’ve just wasted an attack. This has been in since the beta and never mentioned or fixed.

Hammer 3: Moderately low cooldown ranged root. Solid ability. The telegraph is quite long, but so is everything else on a Guardian.

Hammer 4: 750 launch, short range, and low damage. For an ‘aoe’ weapon it doesn’t make sense to have it as a single target attack. It should be changed to a cone attack (max 3 targets), 180 range, 500 launch attack. This will bring it from a trolling ability to a useful CC. Someone mentioned this change in a previous weapons post and I can’t find it, but its still a very good suggestion.

Hammer 5: Brings what little CC we Guardians have to bear…but if the target is running from you it will be out of range before its cast is done. To get around this you basically have to combine it with Judge’s Intervention. This skill has the EXACT same clunkiness that Hammer 4 on warrior did have before it was changed. Why this hasn’t been changed as well is beyond me.

Please post suggestions or comments in the posting below and keep it civil please =D

Also, put weapontype (hammer or @sword) to make a comment about it in bold at the start.

Ihales.3820:

You just confirmed what I said. It is strong in roaming and for focusing single target with numerical advantage. And elementalist or engineer can blast water field in similar matter.

And a thief can stick in short bow, get more blast finishers, and still have plenty of utilities. Both are really strong in zergs, especially with condi necros in grp with them. It locks down groups of people and seperates them from the blob making them vulnerable to attack since they can’t exploit the AOE cap.

Ihales.3820:

You will blast combo fields with almost any class and some of them have their own water fields as well (not only as stolen item from ranger). Strong AoE is also available for a lot of classes, often stronger or with some added utility (CC or also blast).
Venom sharing is one trick pony. In large scale it is useless due to application on different targets with cleave and AoE. It is great for focusing single target when you have numerical advantage. Still you can do same job even without venom share. And shadow refuge in zerg fight is big sign “Attack here” for any competent player. Yet ok, you have banners, glyphs, signets and spirits for revives too, doing same or better job.

You just gave examples of good things not exceptional. I never said thief is bad in everything. I said he doesn’t excel anywhere outside of roaming. It can be decent in many areas but there will be better classes in that area and for many situations the better class will be the same.

A thief can get off 3 shortbow explosive shots into a large ele water field easily. And venom sharing is extremely strong, especially in today’s condi meta, stealth revives are also really good. Just watch these vids for venom sharing stupidity.

Ihales.3820:

MonMalthias.4763:

Pretty sure the discussion’s moved on from the point about soft counters for Stealth openers, but hey, whatever. Blocks, dodges, PbAOE, blah blah blah. It’s been said; the matchup just isn’t fun. I challenge you to say that the Stealth mechanic is well developed across all classes right now.

I also don’t like the general attitude that (I’m presuming here) Thieves that play with Stealth, or PU Mesmer, or whatever other build uses Stealth as a major component that player frustrations are simply an L2P issue.

Let me ask you this:
Why is it that Thief has received a nerf, direct or indirect, practically every patch?

Here, I’ll make it easy.
Because players whine.

Why do they whine?
Because Stealth isn’t fun on the receiving end and the mechanic is underdeveloped outside of Thief.

I will say this. As an Engineer, my favourite moment in WvW was running Power Rifle (not SD) with 3 kits and running into a “permastealth” Thief. My favourite part of the duel was seeing him drop his Black Powder. Immediately I overcharged shot him out of his Heartseeker Leap Finisher, and bursted him down.

I didn’t even stomp him out. So playing around with Soft Counters with Stealth can be fun. But I’ve equally had frustrating duels starting 10k health down, regain the upper hand, and had the Thief Stealth away. That’s just about the most anti-fun mechanic there is and whilst I accept it as part of the game mechanics at the moment; more should be done with and against Stealth for all classes.

People whine because let’s face it majority of players are bad. They whine about everything no matter if it is OP or just annoying.
Why is Thief being nerfed every patch? Why not Warrior? Or any other class? They need scapegoat and Warrior is their favorite class. Most of the developers on stream play Warrior and Warrior is one of the classes with largest playerbase of bad players. I am not saying there are only bad Warriors, but it is archetype that is just extremely popular – more people = more bad people. They don’t want to make one of the largest playerbases unhappy.

On stealth question, no it is not fun mechanic. Can thief survive without it? Yes he can same as Warrior with base HP lowered on Thief level and without any immunities like endure pain, berserker stance, shield blocks etc.
You may ask why did I pick on warrior. That is because in most cases he can disengage as easily as thief and he doesn’t need stealth to do it. He also has “invulnerabilities” like stealth, yet he won’t get nerf.

And other point of view in what does thief excel except of roaming?

(Yes, I am thief player. I would gladly remove stealth if compensated accordingly. And with free profession change I would probably switch. I wouldn’t reroll because of time and money spent on this character.)

Strong aoe in zergs with shortbow, stealth support revives in zergs, venom sharing is stupid kittening OP (even in small man), blast finisher spam into a water field for a ton of healing since initiative is a cooldown (no its not devs, its not even close to a cooldown)

You lack perspective…

Stand The Wall.6987:

Well thats what my guildies and I run on all our guardians.
We take on ~60 every night with our ~25. Must be doing something right.
Not saying there arent other ways of playing guardian, just what I think is more efficient.
/shrug

You must be fighting those NNK zerglings, lol

I ran full celestial on my Guard before I retired him and his JI+Hammer 3/2/5 GS 2/5/3/5 combo did about 11000 – 12000 damage, my dodge rolls healed for just under 1250 with 25 stacks of healing power. I ran a 10/0/30/25/5 build or a 0/15/30/20/5 build. They both worked very well with celestial.

Its been said a lot before. We’ve shown the devs how ignorant it is to have our weapons messed up how they are. Smite being RNG, slow ranged attacks, projectiles that don’t get projectile finisher…etc. They obviously think that its perfectly fine for 2/3 of the scepter abilities to hardly land.

Saw these triplets in LA

For all of you Guardians that say “Aegis is too strong to have it on anything lower than a 90 second CD” Look at Prismatic Understanding in the Chaos tree for Mesmer and then try to tell me how it needs to be on a 90 second CD.

Frank, there are three primary modes of travel that a Guardian has. To roam you need at least two imo. Flashing Blade, Leap of Faith, and Judge’s Intervention. If you got sword you’ll need either Judge’s Intervention or Leap of Faith. I run that weapon combo often with JI.

WvW. And I take back my previous statement. They did add a 300 range jump to the ability, however without that the hammer would be completely useless. As it stands right now its a decent weapon thats really good when you combine it with other abilities instead of it being great on its own. Actually that could be the Guardian’s motto:

This class is good when you combine a few things.

They aren’t going to change anything Jackmo. The devs either don’t understand their game or don’t think the Guardian has any problems. This has been talked about a bunch of times and still little to no change made to any Guardian weapons

I’ve given up on them making any meaningful changes to the class. They either don’t understand whats going on in their game or think that Guardian is ‘just fine’.

I found that but was hoping for things more specific, like who came up with the stealth mechanic, wvw map sizes, etc.

Does anyone know? =P

Stand The Wall.6987:

Alright alright so I’m not privy to these small group encounter type deals.

Its ok Stand, neither is 95% of the rest of the people in wvw. But you can learn! =D

Option 1: Throw it at front line for small heal and some good damage, don’t detonate so you can throw it again in 3 seconds.
Option 2: Throw it at front line for small heal and some good damage, detonate for more burst heal and damage.
Option 3: Throw it while making sure you aren’t looking straight at the ground and detonate the orb in your face for some healing on yourself.

Thats about all you can do with staff 2, which is 3 times as much as staff 1 =P