Guild Wars 2

Please understand the difference between the focus and shield before you complain. Focus is more for personal protection and is a bit offensive. Shield is for group defense. For warrior, shield is their personal protection weapon. Trying to turn the shield for guardian into something it isn’t is a mistake. Instead, concentrate on what makes it not work well for group protection.

I’m from Darkhaven and I already hate this matchup. There’s no challenge for us. Both opposing servers have few people, are mostly unorganized, and I’ve seen very little individual skill.

As far as us being unorganized, that’s not the case at all. We have a lot of room for improvement there, but our shortcomings are mostly a lack of people who participate in WvW (we can only field organized groups in 2, maybe 3 of the maps during peak). Our organization has improved vastly since we last played with Anvil Rock against Yak’s Bend three match-ups ago. Last week was a joke and had nothing to do with organization on any of the servers. Once it got to mid-week, the fair-weather WvW players just didn’t show up for either Darkhaven or Sorrow’s Furnace.

The only weapon I have a major issue with is the staff. It has strong cooldowns, but as Ynna said, they don’t work well together. For me, they’re all very niche abilities and because the #1 and #2 abilities are so weak, it feels like a cooldown stick.

The other weapons are fine, though could stand a few cooldown tweaks here and there. Scepter is fine other than it’s boring. It was never meant to hit mobile targets at 1200. It’s a mid-range weapon that was extended to 1200 solely to allow guardians to hit static objects in WvW sieges. Shield of Absorption is fine, other than the collapse secondary being buggy. However, you need to place it properly for it to reach its maximum potential. You can buy a few seconds for an ally to close distance or recover from a stun, save an ally from a stomp (in PvP), protect from projectiles, etc. Hammer seems fine as well; it just has a higher learning curve because you can’t just spam abilities and succeed.

Both hammer and greatsword are viable in sPvP and tPvP. Hammer tends to be in more defensive support builds, whereas greatsword is more for raw offense.

Here’s a good offensive greatsword build, though it may be a bit dated in the meta now:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=K9RVT-EYZig

On the topic of spirit weapons, they’re terrible in PvP except for spirit hammer. Spirit sword can do decent damage if it can hit, but it’s just way too easy to kite and limit its attacks.

The core of the problem is the mesmer exploit issue (and don’t pretend that it’s not happening). In turn, that triggers a feeling of utter hopelessness which just crushes morale among the PuGs and even the steadfast WvW groups. When no matter what you do, you know you can’t come close to competing with 2 minute tower caps, why bother? Casual WvW players no longer queue or don’t spend as much time in WvW, and it just becomes a downward spiral.

We were doing great through Sunday. Then by Tuesday evening, our ranks had shrunk by a wide margin simply because everyone would log in to most of the world being blue and a huge blue lead that only grew. It seems like Sorrow’s Furnace is experiencing the same effect.

The only solution for Darkhaven to counter the morale issue once we’re in the hole is to get more fully dedicated WvW guilds that can fill out the numbers most of the day and not be as affected by morale. But that’s just not a realistic proposition.

Schakal.6091:

Exedore.6320

Virtues is good in an “all-or-nothing” sense. It’s very good for heavy support builds, but there’s little in there to make it worth taking for any other purpose. However, the first minor trait is extremely strong and hard to pass up in any build.

I actually have to disagree. But it depends on what you want to get out of your build. My basic line of thinking is that more Boon Duration is always good. Whether you Shout a lot, whether you stack Might via Empowering Might or Empower or whether you’re just spammy with your Virtues. You don’t always need to go 30 deep, but 10-25 all have worthwhile picks, even for more offensive builds.

My point was that unless you’re going for a support style – and I would consider a shout heavy build support – then the benefits of the Virtue line are just not that good. If you’re going for a damage build, then 5 points in Virtues can be great, but 10 points is rarely that useful, and anything more is hurting you. If you go a support build, you probably want to dump 20+ points into the line to increase boon duration in addition to getting some bonuses to your Virtues (which you’ll use quite a bit). You can’t just look at the minor major traits. You also have to look at the stats lost by not going into a different trait line.

No, I was aware of the scaling. Just saying it may shift more in that direction (even less base damage, but more damage per power).

Shelter is great and, in many situations, our best healing skill. If you look at just the healing numbers, ya it’s terrible compared with Signet of Resolve. However, if you consider that it’s on a shorter cooldown (for those of us that didn’t pick up the signet cooldown trait), and when timed properly, the 2seconds of block can mitigate more damage than the raw healing of Signet of Resolve, then it’s actually very good. I’ve used Shelter before to stop flurries of thief attacks, 100blades, etc.

Renewed Focus is very good as well, but without 5 points in Virtues, it kinda sucks. I like that it can also be used as an immunity to stop incoming damage.

Tome of Courage is extremely good in sPvP. In PvE, not so much because there’s much better management of incoming damage.

Sanctuary was nerfed shortly before retail (used to last longer), and is a little weak for its cooldown. It’s mostly used for sPvP.

No. You can get:
- Toughness/Power/Precision
- Power/Toughness/Vitality

Guardian downed state skills are fine. As a trick, I’m pretty certain #3 acts as a rally assist for #4 and tends to revive you very quickly (as long as nothing is there to interrupt you).

Retaliation has constantly been on a fine line between useless and overpowered (this mostly applies to sPvP). If you build your character to stay alive as long as possible, Retaliation will end up dealing a lot of damage, giving you offense with little investment in actual offensive stats or abilities. That allows for a heavier focus than desired on defense. However, if you balance retaliation’s numbers for those builds, it feels like it has no impact whatsoever for characters that aren’t built to take a considerable amount of damage.

In the long-term, this boon may become more dependent on an offensive stat like power or condition damage than it already is (lower base, faster scaling). That way, it will be stronger for the squishier characters and weaker for the survival characters that tend to get it extended as a freebie for focusing on defense.

I mainly have a gripe with Zeal and Valor. The rest of the trait lines are pretty good, though some abilities could use tweaks. The reason I focus on those two lines is because their focus is too narrow.

There is basically no point in going 30 into Zeal. Ever. Spirit weapon AI is too flimsy to warrant boosting their damage. Healing on the greatsword, though it seems great on paper, is just that. If you’re attacking 5+ enemies and you aren’t in danger of having your face smashed in, the healing is pointless (nothing is reducing your HP). If you’re attacking a few things and they’re hurting you enough to be scared, the healing is rather weak. Even at the master level, the only overly useful major trait is the one to stop spirit weapons from being destroyed on command (another topic). The 5% damage can be picked up via other traits. On top of that, all the minor traits focus on symbols. If one or maybe two did, that would be okay. But not all 3. In addition, using symbols offensively only works well in PvE.

Valor has the same problem as zeal, which is that it’s overly focused. However, it’s not as bad because at least it has a decent selection of powerful major traits. The meditations are instant trait needs to be re-done, however. This is a relic from beta when all meditations had a cast time. At the end of beta, Judge’s Intervention and Contemplation of Purity became instant by default. But basically, if you aren’t using a mace, hammer, shield, then the master slot seems wasted. I usually see the +5% of toughness->precision trait taken with -20% meditation cooldown taken in the first two major trait slots.

Radiance is pretty good, though its focus is clearly on one-handed weapons. Still, half is better than a single weapon.

Valor I find good all-around. Support builds can use it to help with shouts and healing, and offensive builds also can use it to add healing and damage.

Virtues is good in an “all-or-nothing” sense. It’s very good for heavy support builds, but there’s little in there to make it worth taking for any other purpose. However, the first minor trait is extremely strong and hard to pass up in any build.

Many of the traits Ynna mentioned are actually useful if you have a build for it. For example, I use the trait that has Aegis heal on removal. Ya, it sucks when doing zone content, but in dungeons and PvP, when it resets during combat or you activate the virtue, that healing is pretty good for an adept level trait. If you combine it with a spec into Valor, you get additional benefit because Courage recharges on a rally (and you WILL go into downed state in most content). But in general, Adept level trait issues can be left for later since they were never intended to be extremely powerful.

I would tackle the issue of spirit weapons first. Many seem relatively weak without the master trait to not destroy on command, but some (spirit hammer) seem overly strong when using that trait. I would just make the not destroyed on command trait baseline to the weapons. Perhaps raise the command cooldown and have this trait lower it?

In general, a lot of the bonuses that apply to one weapon need to be combined or made far more powerful to make up for them only applying to one weapon. For example, 5% damage with scepter or greatsword should be the same trait or 5% damage from greatsword and heals on hit (as a grandmaster trait).

Valor’s master traits need to be a bit more broad. I would drop the instant meditation trait (make it default on the rest if needed) and replace it with something that you don’t have to build around in order to use it.

Just finished this. We cheesed it by keeping one of the grenadiers alive. I have a feeling some of them are supposed to stay behind the first boss. Otherwise, the gate system feels silly.

MysticoN.5068:

But i also heard that its not realy that good to stack might when you have over 2k power. (post in this thread)

This is because Might is absolute in terms of its scaling. If you deal 100 damage, 1.5 damage from Might is a lot. If you deal 500 damage, 1.5 damage from Might is a lot less. You’re better off looking for something with percentage scaling.

So for most offensive guardians, which will naturally have high power, self-stacking Might isn’t as good as using 6x Rune of Strength and just enough Might to keep the 5% damage bonus active.

Elthurien.8356:

makes me sad…how do i reach those??

You need to take garrison to get those trebs.
That’s the advantage of holding garrison, you can assault bay keep indefinitely.
Good game today. Glad I had the day off work.

Actually, that’s not true. Those trebuchets can be killed without entering the garrison. Sorrow’s Furnace taught us that.

Darkhaven could use some NA peak time players to fill in opposing borderlands. EB and our own borderlands is usually a 5-15 minute queue during peak, but other borderlands are generally instant. At the start of last week, we decided to organize ourselves and are steadily improving.

The Darkhaven night crew isn’t really a zerg as much as a blitzkrieg. It’s more organized than you would think. It’s a tremendous asset while we work on improving our peak time performance.

And “WE NEED FOUR RAMS!”.

Also, Worban, I think he was talking about Overlook (red) keep in Eternal Battlegrounds. You can place trebuchets there and hit the outer walls of Stonemist Castle. The other two keeps can’t do that. But you would have to re-design to the map to fix that. All of the maps are balanced such that trebuchets at certain towers can hit other certain locations. Adjusting trebuchet range would break that balance.

Pyrite.9641:

“of the Forge”

It’s perfect for guardian, but it uses Sorrow’s Embrace dungeon tokens. UGH. No wonder I couldn’t find them on the trading post.

I’m underwhelmed by runes for PvE/WvW as well. A lot of them focus on boons or conditions we don’t have or don’t have in significant amounts. Some will still work in PvE because you can get those from allies, but in WvW, you’re very limited.

The soldier modifier (Power/Toughness/Vitality) isn’t obtainable on crafted gear. However, it is obtainable on 5/6 pieces from the temples in Orr, on WvW gear, and on some of the dungeon vendors (Ascalonian Catacombs and Honor of the Waves and maybe one other).

It depends what this is for (solo PvE, dungeon PvE, WvW, sPvP), which weapons you’re using, and how much base power you have. First, if you’re doing group PvE, especially in dungeons, you will almost always have might and almost always be attacking a burning target. Most of those might sources you mentioned are only for yourself, so the comparison is pretty easy to make.

That being said, from the math I’ve seen, Might has less returns as a percent increase with the more power you have. So if you have 2000 power already, which is common for a lot of offensive guardian builds, you probably don’t want to focus too much on the Might boon. You may want to go with 6x Rune of Strength instead and get +5% damage while under the effects of Might.

I wouldn’t go Rune of the Flame Legion. If you’re grouped with others, burning will always be up on targets with a lot of HP and unless you’re adding to condition damage, there’s no compelling reason to extend your burning duration. In solo, stuff dies quick enough that it won’t make a huge difference.

Overall, rune choices for guardian seem rather lackluster. Most focus on offensive boons, of which we don’t have many, or conditions that we don’t have or don’t use a lot.

Other than being extremely boring, I think the scepter is fine. It was only intended to be a mid-range weapon, but because we had nothing at 1200 range for WvW, it was extended to 1200 during the beta. Basically, if you’re hitting something mobile, use it as a mid-range (600-900) weapon. If you’re hitting something that’s not moving around, you can do long range.

Outside of hitting mobile targets at long range, you have smite, for AoE damage on a short cooldown, and you can immobilize to alleviate the movement issue.

Still experiencing this issue as well since BWE2. One thing I was able to do to make it happen far less often is to run in windowed fullscreen mode (under graphics options) instead of fullscreen mode.

Now it only seems to crash in some cutscenes.

SuperLuigi.3720:

Rapid-firing attacks increase in damage with each hit, from what I’ve seen; an Aegis in the middle breaks that chain and restarts the damage cycle at the initial hit amount.

I’m pretty sure the damage is consistent across each part of the attack (unless it explicitly says otherwise). What you’re seeing is an artifact of how the combat text works. For rapid-fire attacks, the total damage of the attack is displayed with every successive hit.

Downstairs Eddie.8125:

I don’t know why people are saying guardians are weak on condition removal. We have Smite Condition on a 20 (or 16) second cooldown, Contemplation of Purity to remove all conditions, we can have two passive condition removals every 10 seconds (signet and Purity trait), we can use Purging Flames and Save Yourselves and the focus and the torch to remove conditions from allies, the Spirit Bow removes conditions, the greatsword symbol + whirl combo removes conditions, all our light fields can be used in combination to remove conditions, we can trait to make our shouts remove conditions, or you can use Runes of the Soldier to make shouts remove conditions (including on allies if your shouts affect them).

What more do you need?

A lot of the conditional removal isn’t all it’s cracked up to be. The bow misses a lot. Contemplation of Purity is often a waste with such a long cooldown in order to remove a couple conditions. The biggest problem I have with conditions as a guardian is that I want something that can remove two conditions (since most condition builds apply more than one). If I have immobilize and a couple stacks of bleed, I want to remove immobilize. But it’s not always the case that you can do that. I think the lack of abilities to free us from movement impairment conditions is the overriding concern. The damaging ones we can deal with in ways besides removing them.

Er, it’s already piercing.

Ya, just noticed that. It was probably the myriad of terrain collision issues that it has, or the fact that the width is so small.

(character limit hit)

Recommendations
I would like to see the staff have a better focus on offensive support, since the mace tends to cover defensive support, with the hammer being a balance of the two with damage. In addition to fixing bugs:
- Add damage to Line of Warding when enemies pass through it. This makes it feel less useless against immune opponents.
- Increase the cast speed of Line of Warding. This is to specifically allow it to be used a retreat mechanism in PvP.
- Change Wave of Wrath. I recommend 900 range (you’re about 600 yards from your melee, so you’ll be able to hit opposing melee as they move around) and re-balancing it for a lesser number of targets. Possibly even single target.
- Consider changing the Orb of Light detonate to yield a condition or boon. Since Empower has a heal at the end, the heal on detonate seems to have a lesser impact.
- Consider making Empower one second shorter (4s to 3s with 3stack/tick to 4stack/tick) or make the Might boons last a little longer. The latter could be a problem in a ranged group. This allows the guardian to keep up with a mobile group a little better and not be as restricted by instant death attacks in PvE that you have to dodge immediately.

Currently I have a love-hate relationship with the staff. Some aspects of it are really good some of the time, and others are just awful all-around and make me not want to use it. Here are my thoughts. I’d appreciate feedback.

General
The staff is intended as a support weapon, and I have no quarrel with that. However, it doesn’t support well. The support it offers is almost exclusively offensive in nature, but, the lack of offense of the staff itself, combined with channels on two major abilities greatly detracts from this. The abilities tend to be extremely situational and one-dimensional (they only have one function). To contrast, Flashing Blade on the sword can be used as a gap closer or a blind, which allows it to be used in more situations and presents the player with a choice in some. Lastly, and I feel this is the biggest detractor, only the longer cooldown abilities feel useful, which makes the staff feel like a “cooldown stick” rather than a weapon you’d want to keep out.

#1 Wave of Wrath
I find this ability absolutely useless. And when your weapon’s default attack feels useless, it has a huge negative impact on the weapon as a whole. What makes it bad is the terrible damage combined with the short range. If the staff is intended as offensive support, I would expect slightly higher damage to compensate for the increased danger. Conversely if the range was longer, it could justify the low damage. It seems it was balanced around the fact that it can hit 5 targets in a cone, which is often not the case.

#2 Orb of Light / Flash of Light
Ignoring the terrain collision bugs (including it sometimes not resetting the chain when it doesn’t collide), it’s an okay ability. But with such a short cooldown, it feels awkward – almost like it should be the auto-attack ability. The slow speed makes it impossible to hit anything that moves if you’re at the max range. In comparison, scepter #1 has a much higher attack speed, no cooldown, and faster travel time.

#3 Symbol of Swiftness
Aside from bugs (sometimes doesn’t add duration or doesn’t apply at all), it’s great. Swiftness by itself is offensive and defensive; it gives secondary uses of ranged area damage and a light combo field.

#4 Empowering Might
Seems great in theory, but has issues in practice. You’ll only really care about might when you want to do damage, which is generally an offensive scenario. However, that’s not so bad since 420 power and condition damage is pretty good. The problem is that in an offensive scenario and at medium range (I believe all boon abilities have a 600 range limit), the self-root makes you a sitting duck in PvP and many PvE situations. It’s an okay risk/reward, though I think the risk is a bit much for the reward.

#5 Line of Warding
Works decently in PvE because NPCs are too dumb to go around and will constantly run into it and be knocked down. However, stability, which most champions and some dungeon mobs have innately, renders its primary purpose completely useless. The secondary of a light field is still there at least. The cast time makes it hard to use while advancing or retreating because by the time it actually goes off, your targets have moved 600 range or more. In a retreat, that means you’ll be targeted and nuked down. In an advance, that means you need to be nearly on top of them in the first place.

Summary
I’ve tried staff in zones, dungeons, and WvW. For zones, it’s only useful for swiftness. The damage is too pitiful to do anything else with. For dungeons, again the pitiful damage and no support on short cooldown abilities makes me not want to use it. I’ll pull, throw down the Line of Warding (though only on trash since it doesn’t work on most bosses), empower, then weapon swap while it empower is on cooldown. Swiftness isn’t that great for dungeons and there’s little benefit to using the first two abilities over other weapons. WvW feels the same as dungeons, except swiftness is immensely powerful. The first two abilities still feel useless though.

“Is it worth going for healing power or should it be avoided like the plague?”

Both. If you aren’t abundantly using weapon, utility, and profession skills that take advantage of the healing stat, avoid it. You just need to look at it in the sense that killing a target before it gets off an additional attack prevents more damage than would be healed by healing power.

If you are, then you need to weigh the pros and cons of the situations you’re in. Specifically: “Are lots of smaller heals over time helpful?” and “How many people benefit?” Since the majority of guardian abilities that benefit from the healing stat affect the group, having a group of 5 always makes the stat more favorable (most abilities cap at 5 players affected). The question of whether the smaller heals are helpful is subjective. In an situation with moderate area damage, one could argue yes, but that is countered by the fact that individual players could self-heal anyway after some damage has added up. Similarly, if players take little damage other than an avoidable “instant death” ability, then small heals over time aren’t that useful.

Seems like most posters here are just inexperienced with the profession. Guardian is naturally supportive, so it’s very easy to go so deep into that role that your offense is then lacking. It’s the opposite of warrior where offense is abundant and obvious, and you have to work for support. In addition, the default supportive nature of guardians makes players reluctant to give it up when going for damage, even though when you compare it to other damage builds, they don’t really have any support and limited survivability.

From my experience, one of the main hurdles to overcome when going with an offensive guardian build is the notion that you need your defensive utility and stats to survive. You can do perfectly fine against most small groups with limited amounts. However, you need to be very familiar with when – and when not to dodge. Similarly, you need to be better aware of Aegis, including activating Virtue of Courage, and blind. Also, consider using Shelter for your heal. Against a focused assault and burst damage, the 2 seconds of block prevents far more damage than any of the other options could heal back.

For WvW, we do lack ranged options, which hampers us a bit. So for sieges, it’s generally better for us to man the siege equipment or run supply. Scepter is your best choice for that because the ground-target AoE has a short cooldown.

For being offensive, you need to set up traits and gear appropriately, but realize that you’ll never be a glass cannon like most thieves or 100blades warriors (which are easy to render useless). Generally you want to get 30-40 points in Honor and Valor to boost your toughness and vitality, then Zeal for two-handed weapons or Radiance for one-handed. Radiance doesn’t have many good options to better two-handed weapons and it’s just as easy to get precision on gear. For gear, you want a mix of offense and defense. For defense, I like the “soldier” items (Power/Toughness/Vitality) because it allows easy substitution of and balance with “berserker” items for pure offense or “explorer” items for magic find. I don’t like combining “knight” and “valkyrie” much because you end up heavy on toughness and crit damage but light on precision. Note: “soldier” can’t be crafted, but is fairly common on vendors, specifically the WvW vendors.

Same. Logged in and out, logged in a different character, restarted game and no luck.

Also, if the target is slightly above or below you, it will miss. Using melee attacks underwater takes some small positioning tweaks to make sure your target is in front of you.

One of the reasons you don’t see Healing Breeze used more often is that it’s a channel and if it gets interrupted, it’s still counted as using the cooldown, even though you only get a fraction of the heal off. It’s not very good in melee, which is where a lot of guardians end up.

Other than that, the three guardian heals are pretty close in terms of power level. Up until the weeks before release, there was no reason to use anything but Signet of Resolve (had the shortest cooldown and same amount healed). Now there’s at least reasons to consider the other two.

For the higher levels of crafting gear, you can only make 7 modifiers: Berserker, Carrion, Cleric, Explorer, Knight, Rampager, Valkyrie. Can we get additional mods like the ones available through Structured PvP? Specifically, I’d like to see a Soldier mod (Power, Toughness, Vitality).

They could be done using combinations of the fine crafting materials instead of all the same kind.

WinXP 32bit
GTX 260

Since BWE2, I would crash occasionally with my screen turning all a single color and having to hard reboot my PC. I dealt with from time to time. It would happen a lot in the downed state when I would use the #2 (knockback) ability on my guardian. It was happening in retail, though not all that often.

I got to the mission “A Light in the Darkness” in my personal story. I got up to the point where you entered the tomb (trying to avoid spoilers) and in the first big room after the hallway, it would crash. Every time. I must’ve done it at least 7 or 8 times. It also crashed in other parts of the mission, but not regularly.

I saw something about using windowed mode on the forums (I had been using full screen). Windowed Fullscreen fixed my problem.

Hopefully this helps others and helps ArenaNet replicate issues.