Guild Wars 2

That was in reference to the “DPS” or glass builds in PvP, not the Guardian specifically.

Straegen.2938:

There are variants of condi P/P, non-stealth S/P (lots of practice) and a couple others but they are like the unicorn… often heard about but rarely seen.

I, for one, welcome our new Bounding Dodger Trap CC Improv Condi P/P overlords.

You could make a Radiance/Honor/Virtues Magi build with the Signet (because the Signet trait significantly affects the hps). It puts out pretty decent healing, but it would be much, much better if it could proc every second rather than every 10.

The Elites don’t need crazy and unnecessary tinkering, is Signed that need to have a niche. The Light Aura/Retaliation schtick is stepping on other traits’ toes.

Pro tip:
Your opinion of how boring of a trait happens to be does not actually make those skills harder to use.

According to Quantify ([qt]?) who ran numbers on a bunch of builds, they found that Scepter, Sword, and Hammer all performed extremely close to one another in a raid setting. The traits happened to be mostly the same with only minor gear adjustments, so in a less hardcore setting, any of those options would be fine. Under optimal conditions Scepter edges out the rest, but it’s largely negligible.

I’ll maybe grab a link when it’s not 5am and I’m not forced to be on mobile.
Found it

Ryou.2398:

Ok people do not read

Ryou.2398:

Nothing on the dev tracker and I follow it to see the plans for future updates, where is it then if they said it so recently?

Obtena.7952:

The quote I provided IN THIS THREAD wasn’t from launch .. it was from last week.

Obtena.7952:

Also, from an AMA with Dulfy:

What do you think of the idea of having PvP only include “DPS” builds? Also, where do you see Guardian in the future of PvP?

There has been debate here on the subject but it’s more along the line of what are ways we can speed up the game.
As for guardian I’ve always liked the feel of less mobility but high effectiveness that scales more with more people making them strong group fighters but I think with a lot of the changes the guardian’s ability to sustain compared to other professions has been a major issue causing them to be less effective and something we need to work on but it can come into conflict with speeding the game up so it’s a bit tricky.

ZoroDaOtter.3859:

Link to quote if anyone wants.

Ryou.2398:

Guardians are not designed to be less mobile in combat they have plenty of mobile options.

mrauls.6519:

Yes they are designed to be less mobile… Devs have said it time and time again… Look at the pic in my signature.

Dev Thoughts on Guardian [July 27, 2016]

These are some Hillary Clinton tier suggestions

Nah, Radiant Retal can stay how it is. It just needs to scale from both Power and Condi, and then also grant Light Aura on hit. Then Signets can grant something more useful to signets and not step on any toes.

ddoi.9264:

Ghotistyx.6942:

Have you considered not attacking the ground?

Can’t, too many pebbles on the floor blocking my view.

Then have you considered not being an Asura, or at least wearing platform shoes?

Part of that build diversity is due to new options. Eventually those options should fall by the wayside as people homogenize.

Before Trapper runes, traps had nothing to do with stealth. Traps are CC and utility for the Thief.

Traits were also designed to have synergy. Deadly Arts was more the line that took advantage of having conditions on people, not so much applying those conditions. Things have definitely changed since the beginning of the game, but that doesn’t necessarily mean those two ideas (or other trait/skill pairings) need to be moved around. They’re still accomplishing their intended design as they are.

ddoi.9264:

obstructed obstructed obstructed obstructed obstructed obstructed obstructed obstructed obstructed obstructed obstructed obstructed outofrange obstructed obstructed obstructed obstructed obstructed obstructed obstructed obstructed

otherwise fine.

Have you considered not attacking the ground?

Renewed Focus is a skill, so it probably shouldn’t be in the Virtues trait line

I’d rather not have any of these changes tyvm.

The changes just make it a more competitive option. You keep all the goodness of WH5, but now you lose less damage compared to axe and you can bring a bit more to team play with the Vuln. There’s less of a drop off between weapons, which is always a good change.

It doesn’t even have to be something like that. Rangers can have a longbow and 25% increased run speed. However, Rangers aren’t Guardians. Guardians are designed to be less mobile, but powerful team fighters. You’re defined just as much by what you do well as what you cannot do well.

Hammer has never really been a top option for burn builds. Guardian Burn revolves around getting as many multi hit moves going as possible which makes Sword, Scepter, Greatsword, and Staff the best options, probably in that order. Torch obviously if thy best offhand for the innate burn, but also because of Cleansing Flame hitting a max 30 times. Drop a symbol and then Torch 5 and all of a sudden you could have 13 stacks of burning on 5 targets..

Guardian definitely had the tools to have a threatening burn build, and Dragonhunter gives us the opportunity to make it even better if you go all in. You could build around stacking Might with Zeal and Scepter, or putting out cover conditions with DH and sigils. There’s variety and a filled niche with the burn Guardian. This patch just made it better.

You’re like, 6 months or more late

[cruisecontrol]
MAYBE BECAUSE DIFFERENT CLASSES GET DIFFERENT TOOLS
[/cruisecontrol]

What’s nice is that Shaman and Settlers are both extremely cheap. Obviously don’t bother with ascended, but it offers a lot of nifty things between the condition damage, vitality, toughness, and healing power.

There are also some other options for condi and hybrid builds. Dire Permeation takes advantage of a lot of free crit chance in radiance and gets 100% burn duration. Scepter Hybrid lets you stack quite a bit of personal Might and keeps that 100% burn duration, along with helping out your cover conditions.

Not everyone might like the idea of conditions in wvw, but eventually you should be able to overwhelm condition clears when you’re as efficient in application as you are. I’m sure there are plenty of Power options out there too, and I’ll be taking some time to think about those also.

That would only be true if it was actually 5%

This is what I like about the state of VoJ. Either the active or passive will be better depending on your build.

There was a story where an Anet employee learned about a small text bug or something in the game. In order to perform all the actions needed in order to make that change almost 3-4 days passed before it was added into a hotfix. This happens in every company. This is the nature of software design. Since you’re paying salaries, you’re paying people regardless of whether they actually do anything that day. Some fixes aren’t actually that important. Some fixes are very important, but may take a lot of time to fix.

There is always more to do than there is time to do it.

Consider:
Crusader Funflame or Cele Ruptflame because different is fun.

Westwater.1095:

I’ve been trying to get this to work for like 2 hours now but I can’t seem to reach anywhere near the numbers in the video qT posted. The initial DPS check shows the guy hitting 39K and then it scales down to about 34K, but with all buffs, full ascended zerker gear, force and air sigils on a large golem with all condis on him and the exact same traits I can only get 31K initially and then that drops down to about 29K. I’m really confused about what I’m doing wrong.

Do you have Seaweed Salad (and are constantly moving) and Furious Stones, and are you dropping the symbol before placing Traps?

otto.5684:

“Weapon damage has now been incorporated in this skill,” what does that translate to in terms of the skill damage as a percentage, buff or nerf? Also, when the notes say “normalized,” I assume that all 3 hits for PS and all hits for UA deal the around the same damage. Correct?

What I assume it means is lower power will deal less damage, while higher power will deal more. Or… it might mean the opposite. I think they weren’t happy with the scaling and that’s what these changes were set to improve.

Retreat, untraited, without boon duration, without any other swiftness, will provide an effective 22% increase.

Pyre would be fun and thematic. Eir is an option too, but she isn’t really known for her condition use. Vizier Khilbron, Urgoz, Turai Ossa, or Gwen could all be options. Master Togo would fit the ranged support role extremely well. There are a lot of options. Maybe one of the Norn or Asura could inspire something.

https://wiki.guildwars.com/wiki/Ritualist

Nothing beats the Dawn of the Burnadin, but this is a heavy patch. Top tier

Don’t eat their salt or its you who loses.

Considering Power Sc/T can hit 30k+ dps, it looks like WoP-less Scepter will be just fine, even on small hitboxes.

Mnemesis.8257:

Elixir S seems counterproductive to AED as the two could interfere with each other. Unless you have an unnatural sense of prediction, S could trigger after you pop AED in extended fights and cost you dearly. AED needs that pseudo-death trigger in order to cleanse.

You do realize there is an actual skill, and not a trait, called Elixer S where you get to choose when it activates ya?

Sure are a lot of salty people with a hate kitten for d/d condi in here.

I’ll let y’all into a little secret.
Builds don't have skill. Players have skill

Because sometimes you’ll want to burst without berserking.

Traited sword 2 is 8s cd while traited symbol only lasts 6s, so yes on perma fury but no on perma symbol. Scepter is a little closer as they both match up to 6s, but the aftercast it from being a true perma active. Still, the three 1h symbols all have very competitive uptimes.

Burn Burst is pretty much what I run other then some traits and Torch replacing Scepter. I was doing magnitudes better in Eotm, so I’d imagine I’d have a similar experience in PvP.

Burst Hambow also looks quality. Deflecting Shot is nasty now. Deflect a projectile and you’re looking at an unblockable True Shot that knocks back, and then you can actually True Shot right after. Hammer compliments the build so well with its own changes.

The Bunker looks interesting, but I wonder if you meant to slot Master of Consecrations over Unscathed Contender. Increased uptime and decrease cooldown for your two sanctuaries.

I’d go Sword over Mace. Sword already pairs well with GS, and its symbol gives Fury so you can trait RHS. Go ahead and take Procession of Blades and Lights Judgement as utilities, but for traits you’ll definitely want 2-2-3. Extra damage from Cripple and Vuln stacking. This isn’t going to compete with raid builds, but for Dungeon tier pve it’ll be fine.

You could also replace Radiance for Zeal and take Scepter instead for a more Power based hybrid builds that stacks its own Might in addition to its own Vuln. You’d also get more damage modifiers.

When I read the patch notes, I swore they had taken half of them from my posts over the past while.

After re-reading the patch notes, I mentioned 8 of the 24 changes. I also mentioned some things about Concescrations , but they weren’t as solid as the above 8. Anyone who says Anet doesn’t look at the forums for feedback can go eat a cactus.

Lily.1935:

Rym.1469:

Whatever it is, it should bring ranged condition main hand weapon, possibly with some bonus healing.

Shame that Ritualist had virtually no conditions to speak of. A single skill that did burning but that’s about it. It was a support profession above everything else.

I can agree with both of these. Rit had a bit of armor penetration, a bit of life steal, blindness and cracked armor (vulnerability) access, and a few hexes that can translate into some conditions like Torment.

I also want a ranged weapon that can mesh better with conditions than Hammer currently does, but it doesn’t have to go condition crazy like mace. Even a support weapon that just has Torment on the aa or something similar would be perfectly acceptable.

Axe AA:

• If you have 1 target its a buff of 40%
• If you have two targets its a 30% nerf to Target One, and a 40% buff to Target Two
• Its a 7.6% total damage nerf at 2+ targets.

It fits even better as a hybrid/celestial stat weapon, despite the loss of that one might stack.

Sword and Scepter get symbols.
https://youtu.be/AOAtz8xWM0w?t=4s

Sure.

I don’t really know where is like to go for staff. There’s so many directions that could work, but I’d need access to a lot of data I don’t have in order to determine what I think would be the best choice.

Your suggestions are obviously not the direction I’d travel. I prefer to keep things as original as possible, and use tools that already exist to fix problems first.

Wave of Wrath is pretty good already. It would probably benefit from something smaller, like allied healing, and be sufficient. Orb of Light is the weakest skill. That one either needs something significant or a complete rework. Symbol of Swiftness is pretty decent. I’d increase the damage before anything else. Empower could use a little something more. A blast finisher (or three?) Would be nice along with better Hpow scaling. Line of Warding is already pretty good and doesn’t need anything added to the skill.

A lot of other changes that could affect staff or staff usage would come from other sources. Changes to traits might be a better platform to create a staff niche than staff changes themselves. There’s a lot of moving parts to consider.

What is considered “better” is dependant on how the individual views the weapon currently and the weapon ideally.

But none of this protects you from criticism. And in fact, critique gives you the opportunity to make a stronger pitch. Or you could get offended. Whichever you choose is, well, your choice.

But there’s no reason to say the Revenant couldn’t have an elite spec that’s more mechanically similar to Ritualists. They could have Spirits, or Ashes, or true Spirit Weapons. Guardian Spirit Weapons don’t act like spirits, they act like Minions as they should (mechanically speaking. Better yet, SW and Gyros are the closest to each other). Dhuumfire definitely wasn’t inspired by Ritualists. Spirit Burn is the only skill I found that caused burning, and that required the presence of a spirit, not attacking in in a special transform. However, Ventari’s Tablet acts mechanically more similar to a Ritualist who wants to bring a spirit around with him. Spirit mechanics updated for GW2 combat.

Quantity does not beat quality. Just because I can bore you with novels of nonsense, doesn’t mean I should. And seriously, the colors mean almost nothing. Necromancers are Green and Black. Spectral skills might be turquoise, but Jalis and Glint both hit on that same misty turquoise the Ritualist had. Thematic profession colors aren’t going to prevent elite spec concepts from happening.

Ritualists mainly revolved around Spirits, Bundles, or Spirit Weapons. Creating a new legend that makes use of what are essentially Spirits (stayed the same), Environmental Weapons, and unique/uncommon buffs respectively, wouldn’t be unreasonable for GW2 combat. What you fail to do in all your paragraphs of drudgery is actually have a coherent argument as to why Revenant cannot have a Ritualist inspired elite spec. You talk a lot about colors, Necromancers, and old lore on the wiki, but nothing about relevant Revenant lore.

Pro Tip: MMO designers don’t actually want to achieve perfect balance. Perfect balance makes for a dead game. Constant change is needed to keep things fresh.

The devs do actually make a lot of changes based on player feedback. Aegis on Shield 4 and Boons on Traps are two recent examples for the guardian. However, the devs aren’t going to take most of the suggestions into consideration because they’re just plain terrible. The suggestions you find on the forums are more likely than not absolutely horrible. Either that or the actually good suggestions require just a bit too much for them to be worth implementing. Also, sometimes the community might “agree” they all want something (like +25% movement speed) because they think it’ll fix all their problems. Those problems are likely caused by deeper factors, and changes might be to those sources. When it looks like the change does nothing, it might actually be what we needed all along.

Also don’t forget, changes to other classes affects our performance in other areas. If Thieves suddenly get buffed in pvp, we become more important because Guardians historically have countered Thieves. If (non-bunker) Mesmers suddenly get more used in pvp, then Thieves will be more present, because Thieves historically have countered Mesmers. Sometimes, a significant change to one class will make another significant impact to other classes way down the line. Balance changes affect so much more of the game than people expect. Sometimes what seems reasonable might actually upset the balance worse than before.

But in short; Yes the devs read and hear our suggestions. There’s evidence for it. But just because they hear it doesn’t mean they have to do anything about it. They have much more data on the game than our anecdotes, and humans are more prone to remember a bad situation than remember all the good. Ask a pvper how often they might win. Without looking at the data, they’ll claim its around 50% when the data will show 66%.

Tenrai Senshi.2017:

Sorry, but this is not accurate. Binding blade for Greatsword 5 has a unique debuff with a damage over time effect, which is similar to other conditions but technically doesn’t count as a condition. It is also unique to Guardian Greatsword and can be seen on no other class or skill. So you’re arguing the point that there can’t be a unique buff or debuff unique to a single weapon, even though we have an example that contradicts that idea.

Also, just because the functionality did not exist before, that doesn’t mean it cannot be added. Alacrity didn’t exist before, now it does. Resistance didn’t exist before, now it does. Why must an idea be excluded just because it’s new? It’s just an idea after all, if you think you have better alternatives then you are more than welcome to put your ideas on the table as well.

Spear of Justice does exactly what Binding Blades does, and Magnetic Leap does similar, just without the damage. When you’re first making the game you have a lot more leeway to create unique functionalities. When you’re game is already established, the answer isn’t to give Guardian Staff the equivalent of a Druid Grandmaster that requires no build up nor any other requirement then a landing very large area affecting cone. And why would you make an entirely new thing when you can just add Vulnerability for 4-5 seconds.

Speaking of Binding Blade though, they should definitely add that to more guardian skills. Applying a few seconds of the DoT would be nice on Immobilize or most Control Effects.

Warrior banners are a set of utility skills that fulfill particular aspects of what the Warrior profession has and can do. Putting some unique buff on Staff that has never before been seen does not correlate to the profession identity that a Banner represents. No other weapon has a buff, or even functionality, that matches that idea. It only appears on a single weapon and only interacts with two skills. It has the same functionality as an existing condition, Vulnerability, except it’s even better as it goes over the Vuln cap. It also steps on the toes of multiple Staff Guardians (I would hope you wouldn’t expect it to be stackable). One Warrior banner might equate to 5.6 stacks additional might, but that’s only one of 5 utility skills. They also cost utility slots to use, not a weapon slot. They may look similar in certain areas, but they have more dissimilarities than similarities.

As far as the PvE niche goes, Guardians are in the top end of raid dps using Hammer. They also provide Protection with that build, which makes many runs easier both in raiding and higher fractals. If needed, Guardian can also provide quite a bit of projectile defense. In WvW, the Zergs still live and die on Guardian’s stability. Rev has aoe stability, true, but no zerg is able to rely on that exclusively. The class has the opportunity to cover some useful roles, which is exactly what you want in a profession. Some may feel Guardian lacks in PvP, but updates are coming, and they will change the Guardian in PvP either directly or indirectly.

LetoII.3782:

I think one of our biggest problems is Healing Power scales horribly.
The reason support guardian has disappeared from the meta is, though damage output has doubled full clerics moves your regen from 100/sec to 300/sec..
Nerfed since beta.

damage is doubled, from 100% – 200%

full clerics pushes regen from 100% – 300%

I know what you were trying to do, but it didn’t look very supportive of your argument.

1) Warrior Banners do not compare to a brand new special snowflake buff only found on Guardian’s staff

2)“You can easily change whatever I say to actually be balanced instead of the unbalanced piles I suggest”

3)PS warriors only work when you have: a) a Greatsword b) the Strength line c) the specific Greatsword trait d) the Tactics line e) PS traited f) enough precision to crit consistently.

Other than the precision, Warriors are lowering their potential dps to take those options. The combo takes a lot of moving parts to work. Just because one profession has one thing, doesn’t mean another profession must have it also.

4) Guardian already has a strong pve niche. It doesn’t need an even stronger claim that’s already been filled. These changes aren’t going to affect WvW or PvP in any positive manner.

Fashion Mage.3712:

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.

No, it’s not. But those changes would make Guardian a self healing, required boon sharing, tank that could probably bring more damage than the current Mesmer offering. It already has a pretty good spot with its dps build. It doesn’t need to replace Mesmer tanks plus a large portion of Warriors in addition to that.

Spirit Weapons are similar only in name. There is no relation aesthetically or mechanically, so I wouldn’t call that aspect an inspiration. Engineer turrets aren’t similar aesthetically to Ritualist spirits, but they are similar mechanically, so I would consider them to be inspired in that regard.

Specific attributes of a class may be inspired and some may not. There is no reason to deny that the Revenant could have an E-Spec that is both more aesthetically and mechanically inspired by Ritualists.