Guild Wars 2

Yannir.4132:

Btw, guns/gunpowder are a charr invention, and charr shun magic generally, because magic is a Flame Legion thing.

Charr can’t exactly shun magic in anyway when it’s infused in the lives of everyone. Even warriors use magic with many of their skills. It’s not unreasonable to a assume that crossbows (and other things) never needed to exist when magic has the potential to bridge the gap.

They have to be different and relatively equal. There’s a point where continuing to make things equal destroys diversity and/or simplicity. You say you want to achieve a certain balance style, but frankly that’s just not what you’re delivering. It honestly looks like you’re just sticking your fingers in the dough because you want to, and not because it will improve the end result.

There’s also a concept of design, prevalent in every living MMO, where there is inherent imbalance. It not only creates an identity, but provides a degree of depth. Without it, many games would eventually become spreadsheets of the best build and rote routines for very situation. There is no life in a game like that.

There is certainly room to improve the current state of the game, but it’s good policy to make the least changes possible. Some aspects just aren’t competitive (Spirit Weapons, Signets, ect), and so they might stand for some more involved changes. But, many of the changes I’ve seen in both documents are convoluted for no reason, and some go directly against design philosophies used from the beginning. I still can’t decide if I want to comment on your desired changes or if I should make my own wish post instead, but what I do know is that I would not want most of whats in this thread to have serious consideration.

Yannir.4132:

Lack of crossbows in the current game is a crime btw, they are one of the two links that eventually led to the development of guns. It’s like inventing a car without inventing the wheel first.

Tyrian history is not medieval history. In addition, magic.

Lightsbane.9012:

is it fair to compare dragon’s tooth to true shot?

No.

Because some people on these forums cannot possibly live without their precious 25% movement speed, I wouldn’t be surprised if that’s the direction they go. Something mobility based, which doesn’t exactly marry itself to any particular weapon or skill type.

Another likely option would be that aforementioned Tome spec. I see it acting as a Legend/Attunement (each Virtue changing the effects of skills like a glyph) or like an Engineer Kit.

I don’t really see a Paragon styled spec happening because of the stark differences between the GW1 Paragon and how GW2 is established. You can see Spear, Wing, and Shield motifs in the Dragonhunter spec. Chants, Anthems, Echos, etc haven’t really been shown as particularly different than our current Shouts (unless you do something Mantra-like).

Also, Healer based, Tank based, or DPS based is probably the wrong way to look at things.

https://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Movement_speed

You could always just go double melee DH

My QoL changes:

• Longbow
  Symbol of Energy: It honestly just doesn’t need the burning
  Hunter’s Ward: Wards and other similar CC effects should never cull imo

• Hammer
  (AA needs more than just QoL)
  Zealot’s Embrace: Projectile moves faster
  Banish: Cast-time reduced and maybe hits 3 enemies
  Ring of Warding: Either cast-able on the move, or less “activation delay”

• Staff
  Orb of Light: Remove increased cooldown for burst and normalize cooldown to 4s

• Mace
  Faithful Strike: deals damage to 3 enemies, still only procs 1 heal (Necro/Thief dagger treatment). Probably could cast faster too.
  Symbol of Faith: Activates faster
  Protector’s Strike: Functions like Ranger Greatsword with channel and flip-skill (original skill effects remain)

• Scepter
  Smite needs to be a symbol, which requires more than QoL adjustments
  Chains of Light: I wouldn’t be opposed to a 2-5s cooldown reduction considering no trait reduced Scepter cooldowns.

• Sword
  Sword Wave: Each Sword in the animation is the center point for a small, overlapping, wave instead of projectile.
  Flashing Blade or Zealot’s Defense (likely ZD) needs to be a symbol, which requires more than QoL adjustments

• Torch
  Cleansing Flame: Might as well just make it cleanse 3 conditions on both caster and allies

The other weapons/weapon skills don’t need what I’d consider QoL changes (even some of these are barely QoL)

Ragnar the Rock.3174:

Short of that I would suggest bringing ranger and thief traps up to par with guardian traps because at least guardian traps get 1 thing right, they give you a helpful boon even if the enemy completely avoids the damage.

Thief and Ranger traps are built for different things. Thief traps are more control based rather than damage oriented while Ranger traps are condition based. I don’t know your particular thoughts on what changes should be made for those traps, but they don’t really need as much as most of the rhetoric I hear (Especially Thief traps, which have knockdowns, immobilizes, and one has the potential to grant around 16 Might). As for DH traps, I’ve been in the camp that DH never really needed boons on its traps (except Fragments of Faith. The stability can stay). The 10s base regen on Purification leads directly into a much stronger hps than other heals, and although the Fury source is nice (and prot, and swiftness), its not exactly needed. As has been mentioned, DH traps prey on the lesser skilled, while Ranger and Thief traps are actually better in applying instant effects. The lasting DH and Ranger traps also contribute to an area denial role, which isn’t something to be ignored.

Exedore.6320:

And if you leave in the symbol duration increase, you have permanent group protection from auto-attacking, which isn’t healthy for PvE, even if you lowered hammer damage across the board.

Hammer has always done this from the beginning of the game. It has only ever been a complaint because now we have Raids (where the sustained dps of Hammer and protection is preferred over the burst of GS+X).

Normally I might consider commenting on the changes proposed by Bravery, but honestly it would be shorter for me to just post my ideal changes to the profession as a whole.

You seem to misunderstand, or are intentionally ignorant of the concept that there will be multiple and future elite specs. Dragonhunter doesn’t need it. Guardian needs it more than Dragonhunter, and even Guardian doesn’t need it in comparison to what can come later.

It’s worth mentioning that despite the small sample size, all the votes are basically 0s and 4s. Also, unlike what your public school will imply, C is average. Therefore, there is an aggregate dislike, but it’s not particularly strong. What we can tell, is that it’s fairly polarizing without any strong supporters to counteract the strong disapproval.

Dragonhunter doesn’t need it. Another Elite Spec can bring it if its truly so necessary

Because fully traited into Meditations would imply you’re also taking Smite Condition on heal, which is another Monk’s proc. Going into his trait changes, nothing happens to Smiter’s Boon.

Silberfederling.9302:

So i would really like to see you ressing 5 downs covered in heavy CC and rangebombs. You know, 5 at once not 5 guys that tried to safe their butts by breaking out of line. Take 5 guys at once out of harm’s way and please make a vid. Warrior is down but trust me the day you guys replace warrior in it’s entirety is when i sit on klovans wall dropping my heavy armor and wait for a slow death by trebuchet.

Fully traited Elixer R Toolbelt (Which isn’t unreasonable to bring) will revive 204% over 12s on an 80s cd. Its not instant like Warrior Banner, but it can power through poison fields and a weaker bomb. It has different advantages than Warrior Banner but with its own weaknesses. I’d bring both if given the option.

Gnat.9405:

Why couldn’t this be a PvP/E split? Super lazy.

I don’t like it = lazy.

Aomine.5012:

So can Anet unnerf Bristleback’s HP then?

It’s unfair that Anet has to double-nerf a pet…

Or perhaps its unfair a pet is double-op. I’m not actually going to make a claim, but the important perspective is Anet’s.

mulzi.8273:

As anyone ever seen another class consistently nerfed out of the balance cycle like this? Interesting to say the least.

Ranger doesn’t need that victim complex. everyone complains about nerfs. Reaper was nerfed right alongside, but you probably didn’t read those notes did you?

SqualZell.7813:

Aren’t esports supposed to be balanced?

I’m going to go out on a limb and suspect you don’t understand how MMO balance is done, especially one that’s living.

Because you’ve already made it clear you’re condi, then Grenth really is the way to go. Chill has many more uses than just damage, and Perplexity still requires you to interrupt to get the most out of it.

There’s also a perma chill power based option that puts Runes of Ice to good use. For Power or Condi, 100% Chill duration will get you theoretical perma chill with just Sigil of Ice and Chilling Nova. That would be preferable to anything Perplexity could give you.

Nightmare is a different option, especially if you’re got the condition diversity to take advantage of it (which you should) and would likely be better than Grenth if you’re going for a Terror/Chill style (especially with Trailblazer).

Zealot’s Speed: Its less damage, but it would be fine if it uses Staff’s cd

Symbolic Exposure: The Cripple isn’t needed, and 1/2s is weird.

Fiery Wrath: Doesn’t follow convention (which is more important than you think).

Zealous Scepter: Current is vastly superior

Spawning Power: Irrelevant in relation to Part 1 feedback

Blinding Jeopardy: Cripple isn’t particularly blinding, nor would we want to mix this with Dragon Hunter

Kindled Zeal: Again, doesn’t follow convention

Expeditious Spirit: same as previous Spirit Weapon feedback

Shattered Aegis: Range isn’t really necessary, and you’re just asking for 4 stacks of burning per block, in addition to the Shatter, Retal, and likely Might. Retreat will become the defensive burst it should never be.

Symbolic Avenger: Unnecessary

Holy Cause: Probably not needed, but its not the worst idea I’ve seen.

Radiant Retaliation: Instead, make it scale from Power and Condition Damage using ~0.1 coefficient.

Might of the Protector: You’ve made it even better than the original offending iteration.

Stalwart Defender: I’d actually prefer reverting the bonus toughness to 180, but having it and the Focus trait swap places. Then you could have some interesting interactions with original SD, SiN, and RA.

Glacial Heart: The idea of changing the fields is fun and interesting, but this isn’t really the best place for it. Glacial Heart doesn’t need to be in Valor, in can survive just fine with a little scenery change in Virtues (or even somewhere else)

Retributive Armor: This is too much. Aegis would need a redesign for that functionality. just give it Retaliation on block to align it with naming conventions (That might not play nicely with you Shattered Aegis, but its something that can be discussed. Probably better to just remove the retal on aegis entirely and apply it to RA’s block effect).

Selfless Daring and Purity of Body: The radii don’t need to be 360, and the conversion and just be removal.

Protector’s Impact: Hold on, I’m still chasing it in left-field (at least it hasn’t left the park yet).

Empowering Might: Warriors are locked into 1 weapon and 2 trait lines for their equivalent effect. This requires comparatively nothing and can be paired with AH.

Honorable Staff: Staff already has this functionality.

Holy Fire: Similar to Glacial Heart. This is more appropriate for an Elite Specialization

Force of Will: Well isn’t this an overloaded trait.

Pure of Voice: Probably too strong. Definitely with your Shout changes.

Retaliatory Subconscious: Better idea. Swap it with Glacial Heart and make it activate Virtue of Courage.

Absolute Resolution: I’d rather not

Battle Presence: It doesn’t not belong where you put it.

Virtuous: Crazy cooldown reductions and increased range will not fix the problems you’re attempting to fix.

Supreme Justice: The active could stand improvement, it doesn’t need to be merged.

Indomitable Courage: Its intended to keep the same idea going after your virtue changes, but they need something different, which makes this trait too much to change right now.

Litany of Wrath: Fully traited (taking into account Part 2), it would heal for 7200 sans healing power, good for 300 hp/s. That’s without dealing any damage either. Considering Thaddeus’ post, that puts it at second best without any drawbacks and a 1/4s cast time.

Shouts: 20% Boon duration makes traited Retreat perma aoe swift. SYG doesn’t need 10 stacks, Earth Armor and Dolyak Signet aren’t up nearly as often nor are they aoe.

Purging Flames: Conversion isn’t necessary.

Signet of Mercy:No revive skill revives the fully dead. Likewise, nothing is on a 90s cooldown like that is (Search and Rescue works very differently). In reality, its the passive that needs changing more than the active (revive skills themselves are hard to balance around, being pretty swingy by nature).

Spirit Weapons: I too like to add random effects to skills in the name of nostalgia pandering.

Hammer: AA3 damage will need to drop 20% if its going to cast in 1s. Mighty Blow doesn’t need all of that.

Staff: Why does Staff get 2 symbols?

Mace: AA needs a 3 target limit on damage, not the extra healing

Sword: You just like, didn’t finish your AA changes. You’ve got to explain more than just "Removed Projectiles). In regards to Zealot’s Defense, just make it a Symbol of Deflection and base changes around that.

Scepter: 50% is not the right answer, and the cripple needs to go on the Symbol.

Cleansing Flame: Might as well make it remove 3 conditions from everyone. It’s much more straightforward.

Misc Thoughts: That’s a lot of aegis renewal you’re giving both guardians and dragon hunters. 33% more in many cases. Lots of cd reduction and other fun things. Hope you intend to share some of that with the rest of the professions, otherwise your power is creeping in the wrong direction.

You’re, like, 4 months late broheim.

So, like others have said, these ideas are a little much. Wells don’t really cover something the Guardian is lacking, nor does the overall idea match with your implementation. The profession mechanics are also a little unintuitive. Also, some numbers don’t confirm to the norms.

It feels more like fan service than an actual, realizable, option.

It’s going to depend on your Healing Power Super Speed/Swiftness uptime, and Stability uptime. It’ll also depend on your overall build idea (if you’re lacking sustain or damage).

One of my Scrappers takes RR because of Toolkit and the Tools line vastly increasing its sustain, but one with Juggernaut might opt for MM because of the easy might stacking and Stability access.

Can we just take a second to realize that staff and Mace can get easily get over 4k healing power from doing almost nothing in Zealot’s armor? 4k selfless darings in addition to stacking Force of Will and Esoteric Vitality. But forget about that. You don’t even need healing power with Sentinels or Soldiers, and Shamans is just stupid with everything possible. Even Marauder’s can just not care, because 58% damage reduction under protection, Protection, and the high base Armor from Guardian.

Not even pre-nerf Chronomancers were this grossly imbalanced.

Minstrel’s Aura share isn’t actually the worst idea. You won’t be doing damage, but you will be a force multiplier.

Bugfixes are not nerfs

There’s also the potential to go hybrid with sw/t and sw/a. Use Torch 5 for the fire field and then Axe 5 for the whirl. If anything it’s something different.

If you already have both, then play both. You don’t have to make a choice between them.

Kuya.6495:

I didn’t get why it was nerfed. There are other skills in game that are unblockable and CC. Necro warhorn 4 for example.

What Necro can do has no relevance to what Guardian can do.

Not everything mixes with stat increasing traits. This is a design decision.

Some of you need to leave the shade of those cherry trees.

Its not good for your health

They already nerfed Druid pets into the ground. They’re so nerfed you can’t even tame druid pets at all. omg buff druid pets plz.

Every weapon can be a condi weapon, but some do it easier than others. Most of our ability comes from Virtues, and augmenting that to become more powerful is key.

The different weapons are also better in different situations. I actually used a carrion build in wvw zerging with Staff and Permeating Wrath and became a portable mortar. 15 people all ticking for 2k burns or more. GS can have similar results.

Sword and Scepter do well with single target, but Permeating Wrath can make that single target all of a sudden become aoe. Permeating Wrath is really a great trait, especially paired with Supreme Justice.

DH can perma cripple if you believe in the heart of the cards

Radiant Retaliation needs more support that it currently has. Even I, who specializes in making thematic builds, don’t think its ready.

There is a lot of misinformation in this thread

Tragic Positive.9356:

Shhhhhhh!
Didn’t you learn anything of talking about beneficial intended stuff?

lets not forget. The wiki isn’t an official resource, or at least the information isn’t to be assumed correct. It can and will be wrong, especially if not updated frequently. There are instances where the wiki is correct and the tooltips aren’t, and there are cases where the wiki is very wrong.

I’ve actually been seeing some success with laying down Scorched Earth in zerg fights and supporting through Shouts and Warhorn. SE can hit so many people and can act as a non-cc zerg softener while you traverse the midline, not to mention the wide fire field area for your allies. I run T2, but it’s usually not organized in most regards so these niche builds have a greater effect than perhaps other organized guilds might get. We stay competitive with a strict BYOBuild policy.

Kuya.6495:

Traps, apparently.

Blasphemy

Flame Legion give power and +7% damage against Burning targets.

They’re power runes.

I also like to blame anything I dont like as “cheese”

20% finisher on multi hit projectiles is the norm, not 100%.

Hope you have 24 stacks of stability over 4 seconds. Every 6 seconds hope you have 8 more.

Body Shot: Sure, maybe it costs a little too much initiative. However, drop the ini by one, not to one. Get some condition duration.

Vital Shoot is actually fine. It’s a hybrid AA, and therefore works beautifully with Carrion, Sinister, or especially Viper’s. With DD you can even have a hybrid Sneak Attacker now that stealth would be much easier to come by for P/P.

Ini regen: Thief was changed to regen once per second, which is a large buff to every Thief spec. Stacking all the ini regen options still gives you a lot of ini back over the course of a fight.

There’s lots of options for P/P right now. Condi, power, sustain, trap, interrupt, ect. It doesn’t need any of these changes.

To directly answer your question, I’d take Rage anytime I’ve got Invocation slotted. It’s more useful in more areas of content imo.

If all you’re asking is for raids however, then your question has been answered.

There’s this Crusader MM build which has a ridiculous amount of sustain, especially now that minions take almost no damage in pve.

There’s also a coopted wvw build that translates well for solo pve.

Pro tips on leveling:
Leveling builds don’t exist.
Play with whatever you can pick up.
Identify what traits will benefit you the most and target those (usually go for mobility first. Faster map movement can often mean faster leveling)
Do everything that gives you xp. Kill mobs along the way, gather mats, do events, complete hearts, view pois and vistas, ect.
On that note, get xp boosters. Kill mobs that are not commonly killed (yellows, underwater, in hidden areas) and a higher level than you (conditions actually work extremely well for this).
When you get drops and level up loot, prioritize rampager and carrion gear. That way you can at least deal damage with any kind of weapons or kits you decide to use.

I have a chronic case of Altzheimers and spend a lot of my time leveling characters I’ve recently deleted.

It was posted in this thread.

Looks like a smoke grenade, though gw2 bombs aren’t far off either.

Rousing Resilience is probably one of my favorite underrated traits. This is a build that utilizes heavy synergy to perform better than the sum of its parts.

Also:

…or maybe a new rebirth of the old troll build Mace/Shield-Mace/Sword which used runes of the Guardian .

You’ve inspired me.
PvP
WvW

sorrychief.2563:

staff is the best burn condi weapon for guardian but why does anet put staff trait in honor line?

honestly.

For Shaman burn support obvs.

Drop Napalm on a boss, drop the shredder gyro inside the boss+fire field. Don’t know if it heals you or the gyro, but there’s potential for whirl+dark, Whirl+light for nominal group cleansing, whirl+ice for chill.

I’ll agree there’s not too much use, but you can take advantage of some of the more useful effects like burn stacking on a boss for some burst application. That’s probably the most likely effect to explore.

Demandred.7930:

Just throwing it out there since it seems to elude some people: Wanderer’s could be pretty amazing…

Demandred.7930:

Not always, only for hybrid dps. If you’re looking for tank builds with great condi dps, wanderer’s comes to mind.

https://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Wanderer%27s_Intricate_Gossamer_Insignia

You’re getting at some of the ideas I’ve been thinking about. I’m not sure what exactly they’re going to do, but the ideas at least give a possible direction. Sword right now is in a lull or limbo where they’re reevaluating what Sword is supposed to be. Once we start seeing buffs, we’ll be able to see what they’re tending towards.

I forgot to mention, I was going to give FB a Whirlwind Attack style targeting system. Other than that, FB doesn’t need a lot to be in a solid position. The Leap finisher is the right kind of bump both thematically and mechanically.

The Symbol has a much shorter recharge time than CPC and also isn’t a utility skill. It wouldn’t have to compete with CPC nor any of the other Guardian anti projectile skills.

Sword is definitely in a transition state from niche to niche. These changes combined with current traits would solidify its spot.