Guild Wars 2

Fight pacing was fine before changes. Damage is way too high now.

You should die quickly if you don’t avoid the correct abilities. Right now you die quickly if you don’t avoid practically everything. Defensive stats barely help.

It uses random audio exclamations instead of characters actually shouting “Hold the Line!”.

Deimos Tel Arin.7391:

Exedore.6320:

Are you treating multi-attack skills as one charge for this?

hmmm like warrior’s axe 5 = 15 hits ?
hmmm i dunno. what do you think?

If you made one charge cause all attacks in a multi-hit skill crit, it would make it useful to everyone. However, it would then be way too good and would have to be nerfed. Sigil of Intelligence is already a little too strong on builds which have few but strong attacks. It’s what allowed hambow to run soldier amulet and still do heavy damage.

Are you treating multi-attack skills as one charge for this?

Needs vitality and less toughness.

Phaeton.9582:

Viable high tier build diversity =/= the unique customisation you guys are talking about here though

How would you achieve such diversity? Do you just balance everything around Marauder or Celestial amulet?

NO
NO
NO

Shelter is fine. Meditation guardian is already over the top with self-sustain. You’re breaking an ability which works fine for everyone to make it slightly better for an already powerful build. That makes ZERO sense.

Arken.3725:

I can’t remember Empowering Might even being a viable option way back when. 5 second duration, 1 second ICD? Heck, even if the ICD was removed it wouldn’t allow for any major might-stacking.

Empowering Might makes sense if you put your PvE hat on and look at it in a vacuum. In PvE, getting a crit every second is a trivial task, so you can easily have 5 stacks of might on all allies (150 power, 150 condi damage). A little more if you go with +might duration. That’s better than warrior’s empower allies (flat 150 power) and better than some utility skills.

It falls flat in PvE when you remove the vacuum. The Honor trait line isn’t so great for group support, so no one will take it. Other professions have build which are much better at stacking might, freeing up the guardian to do something else.

In PvP/WvW the much lower crit chance and not attacking constantly completely kills it.

Remember that the profession designers tend to look at PvE first.

@Dr Hashbrown.7104

My point is that runes and sigils shouldn’t be that powerful. A big mistake would be turning PvP into playing the UI.

They increased the damage of Shattered Aegis (I think double), but it’s still mediocre.

It may be used in PvP depending on the numbers on Symbolic Avenger, since it’s hard to keep enemy players on symbols.

Arken.3725:

Motp icd made no sense, you never saw guardians with significant might stacks unlike warriors and elementalists.

This one makes perfect sense. ANet wants to make single blocks more meaningful for the trait and to de-emphasize the power gained by many Shelter blocks. You could argue it went too far, but the general idea is fine.

Disagree. Any rune, sigil, or trait which is powerful enough to warrant one should be toned down to not be so game-changing.

Phaeton.9582:

The same stats means an easier game to balance, which ultimately is best for everyone.

Sorry :/

Sorry, but that statement is FALSE and the reasoning for it isn’t valid. I really hate seeing people spout it off.

When you have the extremes defined (which we do), then nothing can be more powerful than an extreme because it falls between them. If you see builds arise which are too good, they’re not too good because of the stat allocation system; they’re too good because of existing abilities. The problem you’ve created is that you have more viable builds which need balanced. That’s a good problem to have.

Jelzouki.4128:

If I get revived from my teammate multiple times it is the opponents fault for not putting down enough cleave damage to stop the revive. This change you propose takes away from team play, and is just a babysitting tactic that makes the game easier than it should be.

This is such an exaggeration.

The proposal is only saying to add the down-state penalty to PvP. When you go down in PvE/WvW the first time, you start with 75% HP in down state. If you go down again in a short time, you start with 50% HP in down state. Then 25% then 0%. It’s not a penalty for going down once. It’s a penalty for going down multiple times in a short period.

The goal of the proposal is to curb the ability of defensive teams to continually power res each other, usually with the help of Mercy runes or revive bonuses. When you go down, it clears condis and when you’re revived, you often return with more HP than had you used some kind of utility to heal and not gone down. It leads to a frustrating and boring fight where it’s sometimes advantageous to go down rather than desperately try to stay up. All this change would do is make power ressing multiple times more difficult and give a larger window to stomp an opponent on successive downs in a battle.

That was a big complaint I have about Dragonhunter. The longbow traits tend to focus on keeping enemies at range, while the traps and virtues are better when fighting up close.

Black Box.9312:

Honestly, symbols should have gotten soft CC and we shouldn’t even have gotten traps to begin with.

Unfortunately traps are here to stay and the profession has to be designed with them in mind. It’s not ideal, but it is what it is.

However, even with that restriction, CC on symbols would still be a little too good. Symbols do quite a bit of damage, buff the guardian, and are relatively easy to apply. Giving symbols more area control while not locking enemies on the symbol is a better option and differentiates symbols from traps.

To address the issue of guardians having trouble sticking to targets, possibly consider a source of a super speed. To tie it into the symbols theme, maybe grant it when you do a combo finisher on a light field. You could even call it “Zealot’s Speed”…

The wiki isn’t always right. Try it out in a custom arena. Let someone down you, have an ally res you, and then be downed again right after. You still go down with 75% downed health.

Agree with the OP that there needs to be some kind of penalty for being downed multiple times in quick succession. Maybe not as severe as the one in PvE/WvW, but more than 0.

It’s the filter being way over-zealous.

Should be
mortar, —--
damaging

Valkyrie is okay if you have the base HP and can make up for the complete lack of precision. But that’s extremely hard to do unless you base your build around it.

I’m not saying toughness is bad. But even around 800 is starting to become excessive, especially if you’re a low HP profession. Offensive builds would love an extra 200-400 toughness (depending on starting armor and how they play), but you can’t do that in the current system. The closest you get is celestial, which is why it’s so prominent.

choovanski.5462:

we might see more amulets being used as players may find the need for other stat combos. amulets that are not cele or zerk are surprisingly good right now

Such as? Do you really need 900 toughness or vitality, soon to something like 1150? Cleric could be good on elementalist or guardian, but when they have around 12,000 HP at best, they won’t last. The rest is the slew of condition damage amulets, none of which are dire. Rangers can kinda swing one with healing power, but other than that, not really.

You’ve got some good ideas. Others may be a little over the top. A key point is that you at least tried to address how our trait lines lack focus at best or all over the board at best.

Some Issues:

• You say that you want Honor to be the boon specialization, but I don’t think that’s a good choice. Virtues are very boon-centric, so you end up with two boon lines.
• With cripple and other effects, symbols become too close to traps – more than they already are. I think it would be better to go the route of forming them into area control/denial.
• Wrath of justice is too good and will eventually be nerfed/removed. The counter-play is virtually non-existent.

Amulet/Ring/Ring using current combos at 50/25/25% of total stats. Similar ratios work as well.

The big issue with Consume Conditions is that none of the other heals are anywhere near as good and don’t interact well with Death Shroud.

Also, I think it’s safe to complain about proc-based burst damage even before the changes. When it can happen on auto-attacks, it’s never good.

I don’t think global boon duration or condi duration adjustments will be back in large numbers. I wouldn’t be surprised if they adjust the food in the future as well (40% condi duration adjustment is pretty OP). It was too hard to balance when you could increase boon and condi durations by 30% or more.

ANet is instead doing targeted increases. For example, one necro trait line increases bleeding durations. Many runes increase the duration of a specific condition or boon.

If they would fix the amulet system in PvP to not be all-or-nothing, I think you’d see bunker guardians return as semi-bunker.

The problem with the old bunker guardians is that they can’t win or neutralize a conquest node and don’t contribute much damage. Being harder to kill didn’t matter; they could still be focus fired. They did have good group support, though. If these guardians could actually do meaningful damage – enough to pressure enemies off a node – they wouldn’t be so bad.

Mrbig.8019:

Without air/fire, chill of death would never instakill people.

without geo-doom, ip is just a very strong trait u can counter with cleanses.

Those traits have been there for ages and nobody really complained that much.

sigils and runes on the other side…

IP has been complained about since a few months after the game launched. It was changed twice: first the effect was changed to have an ICD and then it was changed from adept to master.

Chill of Death has been a problem since power necro became common.

Powerful procs are bad for the game because they have no counter-play.

snoow.1694:

Yeah you’ve got a point there to be honest, but you forget something quite big. Your arguments would be right, if the Meta stays as it is. You have to consider, that pretty much everything gets Buffed pretty much. I’m speeking about Thiefs how they are now plus 6 Points in Shadowarts. I’m speaking about new Waterfields, Explofinishers and perma Stability on Engis. Guardians will need this changes otherwise we will not be competive anymore compared to other classes.

You’re grossly exaggerating. Meta may change a little and some builds will be pretty overpowered for a bit. But for the most part, builds only got a little bit of bonus or a side-grade. The engi stuff you listed isn’t really appealing for any build and I’m 99% sure the pulsing stability is only when you equip flamethrower.

Now if only we could dramatically reduce brainless proc damage.

I’m all for toning down or removing the prominence of sigil procs. However, it wouldn’t really address the issues with the trait overhaul. Ridiculous proc traits like Incendiary Powder and Chill of Death still exist, largely unchanged from the old system.

Legiion.7385:

Why is GS not viable?

A lot of players prefer hammer to GS for offensive guardian play:

• GS attacks are too easy to avoid. You can move out of whirling wrath and dodge binding blades reliably. The symbol gets off two or three ticks at best.
• Hammer has multiple control options, which are beneficial in group play. Even though all are just as easy to avoid as greatsword attacks, you don’t have enough energy to dodge everything. You can also continue a CC chain that an ally started.
• Whirling Wrath is punished heavily by retaliation, whereas Mighty Blow is not.

GS does have it’s benefits:

• Sustained damage is much higher than hammer
• Good mobility / gap closer
• More frequent attacks means more attacks land. With hammer enemies can avoid or counter Mighty Blow and then kite the rest even at short range.

The deciding factor is how they fit into a build. Most competitive medi guards use hammer for burst and CC, especially when paired with Judge’s Intervention. When the swap cooldown is over, they go back to scepter/focus for sustained damage at range, which is safer than melee. That setup plays to the strengths of hammer while avoiding some of its weaknesses.

ThePaladin.2140:

I’ve taken into consideration the minor buffs and nerfs. So GS 3 leap and Hammer 2 leap will be more viable as they can no longer be limited by movement speed or cripples. Also judge’s intervention can be used to close as well as the new virtue leap. This gives you 4 closing options, 2 mid range, 2 long range. That’s why I was thinking of GS/Hammer.

Don’t count hammer 2 for a gap closer; the short leap is only to make it land more reliably against someone you already have in melee or close to melee.

For the rest, any competant enemy will have swiftness, disengages, defensive CC, or any combination of that and will be capable of dodging. You don’t have swiftness and are very susceptible to CC without stability and relying on long cooldown stun breaks. Even if you close the gap, you’ll quickly fall behind again.

I’m iffy about the longbow’s usability in 1v1 or 1v2 fights wvw solo.

A ranged damage weapon addresses the kiting issue, and if you use hammer, also provides sustained damage which hammer can’t. If you’re still unsure on longbow, use scepter/focus.

Assuming the cast time is instant then:

PvP DPS Build
FMW! will work for DPS guardians at low and mid-level PvP where they’ll quickly explode unsuspecting players with stacked burst. It will be quite hilarious with Judge’s Intervention and hammer ring into greatsword. At higher skill levels, the cheese factor can easily be avoided. And once the quickness ends, it will be too easily punished, as Shelter is the only defense.

PvP Support/Bunker Build
I think FMW! may be a little broken here, since it’s a team effect without locking players into an area like Time Warp. If you thought burst was scary now, a coordinated team will do it in 2/3 the time with FMW! And with such a short cooldown, it can be used multiple times per fight. Other activated quickness sources are double the cooldown and self-only and then Time Warp which is 6x the cooldown and limited to an area.

Group WvW
FMW! may see limited use when the guardian is in a group of backline DPS casters. Necro wells ticking faster and life-blast machine gun will be powerful burst on an enemy group. But for general group play, the immunity and virtue reset of Renewed Focus is so much better. They may even prefer the new elite signet.

PvE
If PvE remains as it is currently, FMW! can easily be substituted for Renewed Focus in most fights.

Unforunately, the PvP implications make me think that FMW! will have a cast time. Instant cast would be too cheesy for average players in PvP, and the group burst potential with no wind-up is a little overwhelming when used by organized groups. It’s worth noting that the tome ability was a 2 second cast time and there is precedent for cast-time shouts with the Reaper elite specialization.

If FMW! has a cast time, it drastically limits the use by support/bunkers in PvP, and I think they’ll go back to Renewed Focus or possibly the new elite signet. Sadly, I see FMW! being too hard to balance well, and it will be relegated to PvE and only used because defenses aren’t needed that much in PvE.

@OP:

1. So you’re asking an escape mechanism (since guardians already have several gap closing abilities)? Guardian, similar to necro, was designed more to stay in fights until the end, not quickly run away and reset. So this seems unlikely happen. If it does happen, it means that it will be restrictive and likely comes at the cost of less ability to sustain in a fight. Would you trade a sizable chunk of healing on meditation use for this?

2. It doesn’t matter where they put Stalwart Defender; no one is going to take it. Shield and its associated trait just need a re-work. The rest of this item seems like a desire to allow medi guards to take two powerful defensive traits which currently compete against each other, which won’t and shouldn’t happen.

3. The internal cooldown was put on this trait intentionally (same with amplified wrath) so that it doesn’t proc continually on Shelter. Shelter is unique in the amount of blocks it provides in such a short duration. If you balance any on-block trait around shelter, it feels insignificant any other time. The ICD allows the on-block traits to have a more meaningful effect for all skills which block, not just Shelter. A better way to change on-block traits to make both extremes interesting is to impose a limit of procs over time, e.g. cannot activate more than 5 times in a 5 second period.

4. The shield cooldown reduction is nice, but shield will still be relegated to niche scenarios like clocktower on Khylo. The problem is that Shield #4 just isn’t good. Give shield #4 more of an impact on combat and it will be used.

Jaxom.7310:

at least to some extent, i should be able to say, like this trait line, but i want to play it as a dps. problem is a full set of adepts/masters/gm are only support traits. so now i can’t play the way i wanted because all 3 adepts (or masters or gms) are support related and don’t help my dps spec at all

This is intentional. One of the problems with the old system was that you could just take all the best damage traits in a line, even taking only the easily accessible ones, and go on to another line and do the same. Similarly, it was too easy to take multiple powerful defense traits and then use full berserker gear.

Traits lines are now intended to center on a few themes. For example, Radiance is burning, one-handed weapon damage, and signets. All the traits in that line should fit those themes. Each major trait selection gives 3 choices for a similar function. For example, the master slot in radiance is a damage increase, but gives 3 ways of achieving it. Other major trait slots may be defense, utility, group support, etc.

One of the big complaints about the guardian traits both in April and now is that they didn’t establish good themes and major trait slots don’t have interesting or competitive choices. For example, there’s a symbol trait in Honor that seems like it should go with Zeal. The scepter trait is in Zeal, but you’ll never be able to place a symbol when using scepter. The adept slot in Honor doesn’t have wide appeal.

If you’re going to use Dragonhunter, then for WvW solo you’re better off exchanging one of the two weapons for a longbow. GS/hammer is just too easy to kite, especially when you have no swiftness, and with no access to stability, stuns make that even easier.

Communal Defenses doesn’t give yourself Aegis, only allies (based on live – I doubt they changed it). Not very useful if you’re going solo.

Your condi clear isn’t dependable other than Contemplation of Purity (I’m assuming you’re using Purge Condition and Judge’s Intervention as the others), which also hampers your ability to stay on a target.

Keep in mind that even at high condition damage (over 1100), burning ticks in the new system will be doing half of what they did in the old system. In order to maintain the same damage as on live, you would need to apply double the burning. Double seems doable, but I don’t see it going much higher. There are some abilities which apply 3 stacks of burning, but those are longer cooldown.

Not much changed other than some traits were removed and some made baseline. There is only one spirit weapon trait now.

Shield of the Avenger will still be useful for certain parts of PvE.

Guild arena is basically a circle with a button to assign teams. Guilds can throw obstacles and traps in it at will. It could replace Courtyard, but not anything else.

Celtus.8456:

The game needs to be broken to get better. Just hope they work fast in the future to address the fallout from these changes.

Agree, but they didn’t break enough and haven’t yet re-assembled enough.

Yes to more stat customization in PvP.
No to your proposal, for a variety of reasons:

• Runes are used primarily for their effects, with stats being secondary. If stats become overwhelmingly the main reason, why even have different runes?
• You can’t just multiply all stats on a rune. Even-bonus rune stats are balanced against ability bonuses.
• This creates dual-maintenance between PvP and PvE/WvW.
• It confuses new players who see two versions of the same thing, one with bigger stats.
• Power builds typically want 5 stats (power, precision, ferocity, toughness, vitality), which you can’t really do with rune + amulet.

The best and simplest solution is just split the PvP amulet into multiple items and let players mix and match like they can do in PvE/WvW. A 50/25/25% split or something similar is all that’s needed.

• One interface change required.
• Artwork for rings already exists for most stat combos (the jewels from the old system).
• Keeps the system isolated fromWvW/PvE but no maintenance needed.
• Can add a combo e.g. Dire to a ring or amulet but not both if it might be too good as a full set.
• Not confusing. The most confusing part for new players is finding the “PvP Build” button and explaining that their PvE/WvW gear stats don’t apply in PvP.

0/10 troll

Stronghold doesn’t require HoT.

Completely agree with the OP. When I saw the April preview I thought, “It’s an okay start, but they have a lot left to do. Fortunately, they have a few months still.” It’s now two months later and practically NOTHING has changed, including the shield trait which they admitted was bad. I’ve lost hope. At the glacial rate ANet changes things, it will be next expansion before guardian catches up.

I don’t think cookies work on devs. They have a stocked kitchen in their office.

Some items for discussion if you want to start this:

• Shield abilities/trait Shield abilities, particularly #4 lack a big impact when used. The trait isn’t worth using.
• Better organization of traits Most traits were left in their current lines where the old goal was to spread functionality. With the specialization system, traits which adjust similar abilities or roles should be condensed into a single line.
• Why was virtue active range nerfed?
• Soft CC for PvP Being primarily a melee profession without abundant access to snares/roots or high mobility never works well.
• Spirit Weapons Do they have any use besides shield in some PvE encounters?

Suggestion: Shield #4 applies Slow to enemies.

It works nice offensively and still focuses on reducing some damage to the group. With good positioning, it can be extremely effective.

Ready Up isn’t the best venue for that stuff. It’s during the day, and when they do these changes, it’s hours long. Very few people are going to watch hours of the video after the fact when they can just read the notes in 15-30 minutes at their own pace.

Another thing that would help foster communication is for a developer to post once every month or two on what they think are the issues and what they’re looking at doing for the next content update. Some examples would be: “We feel that cele rifle engi is too strong, but other engi builds seem too weak. We’re looking further into what we can adjust” and “Our next PvP system priority is <blank>”.

RNG isn’t the same as passive play. Some randomness is okay as long as it doesn’t overshadow actions and decisions of players. You may be confusing procs with random elements, since procs tend to have a random aspect. Powerful procs are generally bad.

So basically it makes the shield trait even less useful?

The cooldown reduction is nice, but it needs a stronger #4 ability to really be viable.

mistsim.2748:

cele is getting nerfed with condi scaling, so youre not gonna keep running the current meta crap. you’ll want some new toys.

Not really. The percent of stats in celestial vs. a triple-stat amulet is decreasing slightly, but the total stats on both are increasing to compensate for removal of stats from traits. Given that, the celestial amulet in PvP will probably end up with between 500-600 to each stat. The point where current condi scaling crosses new condi scaling is around around 700 condition damage. So the condition ticks from celestial builds won’t be that far off from where they are on live. If you have a celestial build which can stack might e.g. shoutbow, it might even eclipse its current condition damage.

I can’t +1 the OP enough.

Agree with Linnael.1069. The anti-stealth mechanic needs to be more generalized with some punishment for using stealth poorly – not specific and put the stealth user at a huge disadvantage for so long.

Maybe take the stability or break-bar approach with stealth? Each stealth skill grants stacks of stealth, which last a certain duration. Specific attacks or taking some amount of damage would reduce the stacks or work against a bar. If you hit 0, you get revealed.

By assuming it’s using the trait for that type of skill, you’re making it niche. Your Shelter example is too good with Monk’s Focus (it also gets a CD reduction), but in order to balance it assuming that trait, it becomes too weak for other guardians who do not take Monk’s Focus*.

The skill is good in its current state (it’s used in almost every guardian build) while promoting skillful play with risk/reward. Leave it alone; there’s much better things to address than breaking a good skill.

* This problem of needing the corresponding trait to be viable is a problem with categorizing heals and elite skills and why I think it was a poor decision by ANet to try and do that.