So your trying to say player complaint has no influence on nerfs and classes not getting updated? LOL…
I’m quite certain that aegis being added to shield #4 was something specifically frequently requested by players, and then that was added. Then at the time he referred to that (very well-received) change as “misdirected”, if I recall correctly.
Guardians are already extremely useful in raiding and wvw. Staff doesn’t have to be a requirement in pvp while overshadowing other game modes too.
Last time I checked, no, the staff isn’t used in raiding. It’s just used a lot in WvW and I don’t think WvW alone should ever determine how something is balanced, especially considering that the game mode itself is basically based on imbalance.
I’m not disagreeing with your suggestions, but why is it you think these skills should be changed as such? Imo, to better make the staff a team support weapon, the only one of these changes I’d really like is the change to #4. Other changes should focus on staff 1 and staff 2 as they’re some of the most underwhelming weapon skills in the game and don’t really work well for either support or damage.
Don’t even think about doing anything to our lootstick. >:(
I was thinking it could also heal allies! The fact that it’s an excellent loot stick in wvw is NOT enough of a reason to not buff it. The loot stick property should be a side effect, or a fringe benefit if you will.
Quite frankly, I hope they completely destroy the “lootstick” aspect of it. It really bothers me that the most supportive weapon that was on what used to be the most supportive class has an auto-attack used purely for farming. The fact that some people are actually in favour for this awful design really irritates me.
Well, they’re not necessarily selfish, but they are quite a lot less support oriented than base virtues. It’s just not apparent because base virtues are such utter trash that it’s hard to make a real comparison, but assuming they were both balanced, base virtues would be more supportive design-wise.
Personally, i think DH was a mistake as an elite for the guardian profession, i’ll prefer they restore guardian as it used to be
then druid was a mistake too imo and they should restore ranger…
You won’t see me complaining. Whoever thought “Guardians want to play like rangers and rangers want to play like guardians” was a good idea clearly needs to rethink their mindset.
To put it simply, it was a cheese build, although I’d say a lot of condition builds are. It did have an interesting counterplay to it compared to other condition builds in that if you remove burning then you remove the damage, but otherwise you’ll likely die in like 2 seconds or so. I guess it was probably comparatively more interesting to other condition cheese due to this, so there’s that.
Boy, I sure do love seeing this topic again. I think I see necromancers complain less about mobility.
Retreat gives a very large uptime of swiftness, and if that isn’t enough then you can take a sigil of agility as well, which virtually gives permanent swiftness.
I’ve played D&D for over 25 years. The guardian has been compared to the paladin and the cleric classes from that by Anet people. Neither of those classes iconically use a longbow. Same goes in Forgotten Realms, which is just one of several campaign settings D&D has used over the years. It is precisely because I’ve played these games that I had a problem with DH. It seemed like they were merging ranger or scout into the paladin/cleric type class.
Can’t say for warhammer, never played it.
In fact, in older editions of DnD, I don’t think clerics could even used bladed/pointed weapons. Not that I think that referencing another franchise validates the theme for something in this game, like the dragonhunter supposedly fitting in because it supposedly references MH (which essentially has nothing to do with guardians).
If the devs actually do something to it, rather than just simply increasing the projectile speed, I hope they make the skill do something more interesting than “fire off generic projectile at a slow velocity that does nothing special”. I dare say it’s the most boring skill in the game right now, right after the staff’s auto-attack.
Also, I didn’t really get a “bullet hell” vibe from the auto-attack either. Like the rest of the weapon, it just feels very generic to me. Like it was a prototype for ranged weapons when they just started making the game or something.
Seems a bit too necro/mallyx-wannabe to me. If guardians get a condition elite spec at some point, it should probably focus on burning since fire is a primary theme of guardians.
The Scepter deals superior damage versus large hitboxes + inanimate objects though.
+ it allows for an off-hand.
I always pick Scepter over Longbow myself.
I don’t think that the scepter being useful in a few niche scenarios constitutes an entire weapon when another weapon fulfills an almost identical role (and is better at it). In most situations, the longbow is bounds better than the scepter. If the scepter took on a ranged-support or ranged-condition damage role, it’d be a much more unique and interesting weapon.
Yes, you’re right. In the face of ANet’s absurd design decisions, common sense and consistency mean nothing.
That’s implying that your opinions are superior to the creators’, which is dripping in hubris.
I mean sure, you can have your opinions, and you might think them to be important, but that doesn’t mean they should be considered. I wouldn’t expect a consultation call any time soon.
It’s less hubris and more that many of ANet’s designers are terrible. So it would be more accurate to say that I think my “opinions” are superior because ANet is just so bad at what they do, which isn’t saying much. GW2 is a game plagued by huge amounts of power creep and bad game design decisions that most game designers wouldn’t dream of implementing.
Me neither. For the most part this isn’t a place to get the devs to consider one’s ideas, however it is a place for discussion, so what you’re saying is really quite irrelevant to this discussion. If you want to discuss how much of a hard-on you have for ANet’s sub-par devs and how you think they shouldn’t listen to anyone, then go make a topic about it in general discussion. :0
That’s one of the things I had in mind as well. They can’t exactly start giving warriors scepters now, can they? I’d say mesmer and ranger thought have pretty much already tapped out on weapon choices within the current pool.
The whole point to elite specs was that they offered a bit of a new spin on the profession while still staying within the profession’s theme (although I won’t necessarily say the devs executed this idea very well). So mesmers getting hammers for example might not necessarily be so out of place if executed properly, although if it isn’t then it’ll probably turn into another Dragonhunter scenario where it doesn’t fit the profession very well, if at all.
Daggers and mainhanded pistols suit mesmers quite well, and rifles, bows, and warhorns could probably fit in quite nicely as well. As for rangers, I can easily see them getting rifles, and I wouldn’t be surprised if some of the other weapons would fit well (a ranger with a shield wouldn’t shock me, for example).
There’s also the possibility of off-hands becoming main-hands, which is probably more likely than a new weapon (but still not that likely).
I think it’s only fair that tomes are the focus of the next elite specialization considering that the people who liked them in the first place got kittened in the kitten ; especially when one notes that tomes were deleted because the narrow-minded majority wanted less interesting elite skills (that initially appeared more OP than RF) over just simply balancing tomes properly which were cool to begin with.
Tomes should be the next update with proper support/heal and GUARDING skills. Like a kit, one tome for defense, one tome for heal would be very interesting. I would definitely play that.
The fact that they stopped developing skins for spears/tridents/spearguns kind of makes me doubt that they’d make a return above water, even with a different name. Not that I would mind them.
If anything, Dwayna is the closest you’ll get to an Angel in both appearance and status.
Well, Grenth has his reapers, I wouldn’t be surprised if Dwayna had some sort of counterpart. Not that this has been established in the lore at all. :p
There’s not really that much counterplay if the boon is up most of the time (which it is right now). Of course, a simple solution to this would be to actually make it effective but make the effect much harder to maintain.
Alternatively, they could make it stack and pulse out damage sort of like a radiating condition centered on the user. There are a few things they could do really.
They fixed this exact issue with confusion since it was so badly designed, they might as well do something to retaliation as well. It took them two-three years or so to fix confusion though, so I wouldn’t hold my breath.
OK, but that’s not the same thing as having access to two weapons with symbols simultaneously. If off hands had a symbol, you do stack two simultaneously and get access to three or even 4 if more than 1 offhand had a symbol. You could symbol bomb everywhere with almost unlimited restrictions if that were the case. Not to mention how all the add on effects would stack.
Two stacked symbols aren’t impressive, and if you double “not impressive”, chances are it’s still not going to be particularly impressive.
3. Mainhand focus: Quite unlikely, but it could have some tie-ins to lore depending on how the focus is used. It could essentially become a catalyst for magic (think talismans in dark souls) and could turn us into powerful casters! This could compliment the return of tomes!
Yaaassss. I don’t expect it, but still. :0
I agree on the warhorn being most likely.
They don’t have symbols for a reason …. it would be way to easy to gain a super effective symbol build. Besides … what is the point of complaining about it almost 4 years later? Like it will change?
Oh no, guardians having a semi-effective build!? What ever will we do? :0
The point of “complaining” about it is that it’s an interesting topic for discussion. So if you don’t want to discuss it, then bugger off sweetie.
Our toggle skill bar we had in tomes were inexplicably removed
You can thank the great fan base for that. “Yeah, Signet of Courage is totally gonna be better than Renewed Focus, who cares if tomes are more interesting, delete them!”. Oops. :0
Symbol of Cleansing on the torch would be awesome. Cleansing Flame’s low range really gets in the way of it being a decent support ability anyway, and it’s not like it does a lot of damage either.
Frostbow was pretty much this until it got nerfed into oblivion. I know a lot of ice-based abilities got buffed on the scepter in a somewhat recent patch, you could check those out.
You know exactly what I mean, so save the nitpicking. :>
Or they could just buff builds that use Altruistic Healing instead of wasting an entire elite spec on making a pre-existing trait/playstyle more viable. I never said a frontline healer isn’t possible. I said a frontline healer isn’t good design because being tanky and being a high priority target doesn’t make any sense design-wise or balance-wise. Of course frontline healers already do exist in the form of druids and tempest healers, so either way I really don’t see the need for more. Unsurprisingly, a common complaint with tempest healers in pvp is “they shouldn’t be able to dish out so much support while being so tanky”.
No, there are very good reasons why a primary healer shouldn’t be on the front line. Healers with huge healing potential in any game are things that are supposed to be focused due to the high amount of threat they produce in team fights. If they’re tanky (as is typical of frontliners), then the counterplay of focusing them goes flying out the window, and if they’re not tanky, then they can’t function properly. Imagine a tanky berserker glass staff ele in pvp, and now tell me exactly how that would be good design or balanced.
And yes, the scepter is pretty much completely useless since it’s outclassed by the longbow in every way. It’s an extremely boring weapon too, so I’d say it deserves a rework.
I’m expecting like a 10% buff to the healing or something. A 10% buff to something worthless is still worthless~
Meanwhile, the warrior’s rifle gets an entire rework.
And ranger sword. But since they’ve actually said something here, I’m willing to hope. Keeping expectations low, mind you (“less-used options”), but hopeful.
Didn’t they post that they’d buff the mesmer’s scepter’s auto-attack speed awhile back, and then they buffed it by like 5% or something?
Tomes hopefully. Maybe guardians could actually be viable at support again then, and on top of that a style of gameplay would be made available that is otherwise completely absent from the game. That is to say, long-ranged support.
If the next elite spec is just melee or ranged dps, I’ll be a bit more than disappointed. If it’s melee or ranged dps, it’ll just be used in a meditation build ala DH and effectively do the same thing. If it’s melee support, it’ll just be doing the same thing as shouts except more useful since elite specs are initially released as overpowered.
It’s also worth noting that boon duration really isn’t all that great for boon share. SoI doesn’t use boon duration because it just copies the current boons, and most of the good boons come from guards/eles/revs, so boon duration on you isn’t super useful.
You apply boons to yourself, they last longer, and thus they last longer on allies. Simple, no?
Notably, boon duration hugely helps with Chaotic Dampening’s protection (giving virtual perma-protection easily), with building and maintaining might stacks from Chaotic Interruption, and it gives more quickness from Time Warp if you choose to use it. There’s also on demand perma-swiftness from SoI’s passive and Temporal Curtain.
Some meh buffs and some fairly big nerfs. They should’ve buffed some of the more underused/useless utilities and weapons rather than nerfing the only decent weapon.
I’d rather keep the orbs too, but just buff their velocity or homing. I’m not really a fan of most beams in this since they lack counterplay that normal projectiles have.
5 months, 6 developers, and only 1 legendary weapon. Must be nice working for ANet, getting away with that sort of thing I mean.
While I think the game is more in need of content and the decision to move away from legendaries is a good one, I really have to question how circumstances got so dire that this decision even had to be made in the first place. What exactly were these 6 devs doing? It’s not just them either, every “major” balance update is just a small bunch of changes that often follow inscrutable logic and only lend to make the game more imbalanced, yet there’s apparently an entire team dedicated to balance. Then there’s like the other 100~ people working on the main game in general that -as far as I can tell- essentially have nothing to show. I find myself wondering “what exactly do these devs do all day?” all the time.
I’m studying a degree in animation right now, and -as an animator- I actually can’t fathom what they were doing for these past months. If I worked at the snail’s pace that ANet works at, I would’ve failed a long time ago and would’ve probably had several disciplinary hearings for not handing in assignments.
I’d say mesmer and ranger thought have pretty much already tapped out on weapon choices within the current pool.