Guild Wars 2

Fiery Wrath is a 3% damage loss while hitting a target on fire. 3% is literally nothing as far as time to kill goes.

If I’m in a dungeon, I’m going to be taking “FMW” over RF for sure.

Also, once again bowing to our Hammer/Mace overlords, let’s not forget the Mace trait in honor provides cd reduction for even more symbol uptime. Essentially permanent with the longer lasting symbols.

Sounds like someone is going to be put on the discount rack with the rest of the out of season fashions.

You act as if this was new information. Most of these changes have been known for a long time. And it’s not like GS+sw/f is the only thing that exists.
Is guardian the only class that can stack vuln? Take Zealous Blade.
Radiant retaliation already scaled better with condition damage than power. The updated radiant retaliation will supposedly scale even better.
Competent players aren’t particularly affected by symbols

All in all, I welcome our new Hammer+M/ForT overlords.

6/6/0/0/6 Rifle+GS, Rifle+Sw/wh.

Because really, did you expect any defense with a rifle?

#RIPochet

It’s already been brought up, but should ricochet not actually be dead, it could be rolled into Unload (despite other skills making use of it. I certainly remember interrupting a heal with the 4th hit quite fondly), or it could return in the elite specialization. The lack of notes would indicate the idea is not quite finished, since the traits from this stream aren’t 100% finalized.

Well, my build isn’t completely destroyed, but it will certainly be quite different.

Our blade barrier will not. And actually, as far as we have information, none of the traps have target limits. Even if they do get limits, Test of Faith won’t by virtue of its design, and you only need 1 pulse to reveal with Jesus Beam

I thought I was on the guardian forums. Must’ve accident stumbled upon the thief forums. Let me consult my map.

Scepter/torch and staff would be perfectly fine together if you wanted to do that too. Don’t worry too much about what kind of build you start with now, as it looks like pretty soon the big specialization update will happen (which will change everything).

A crafted backpack with the correct jewels will have higher stats than one without, and its generally much more simple to craft your own than to get an 80 exotic of whatever stat you’re looking for.

700 condi damage is the tipping point where you’ll start to do roughly the same amount of damage as you did before. Celestial is going to have a harder time getting near 700 (plus is apparently getting a total stat reduction), so they should e doing less damage overall, while carrion easily sits above that mark. Carrion also gives more power than cele does, and Radiance gives us all the crit chance we would need.

Unless you can heavily might stack, cele won’t be as useful in general, which makes carrion the better choice for us overall.

Scanning was an auto correct issue that’s since been fixed. I can only use my phone as my computer is super ded and stuff, bear with me.

They mentioned 700 was the turning point, so taking that into consideration, it would mean that’s where the lower base and higher scaling even out, which is why that number was used.

True, some skills will be more difficult to maintain condition duration with, so you’ll either need to be more skillful in application (ensure a poison volley right on their heal) or you’ll need to bring multiple application sources (trap, SB, spiders, poison master trait, dagger, etc.). Honestly I think it works out to be significantly better of a situation. Perhaps the extra damage itself outweighs the -33% healing your lack of poison would’ve had. And hybrid specs will be fine. Celestial builds won’t be nearly as effective without copious stacks of might, but hybrid build will still easily be able to surpass 700 without might.

Why does everyone forget about the scaling changing along with the base damage? Right there in the blog post, it says (paraphrasing), “about 700 condition damage is where you’ll start to do more damage than before”. With poison and burning stacking, what this really means is that we can actually get condition spikes.

Let’s look at an example. SB2. 5 stacks of poison for 2s. Let’s assume 700 condition damage, as that seems to be the balancing point between old and new. 5 applications of 2 seconds gives us 10s of poison, for 1500 damage. In the new system, 5 stacks of 2 seconds poison gives us 2 ticks for 750, or 1500 total damage. Same damage right? And that’s the point, but 1500 in 2 seconds isn’t worth cleansing, and even if they do, you still might get 750 damage from it, as opposed to 150 from the old tick.

And let’s not forget. 700 is a small number when you’re stacking condition damage. That’s hybrid levels of stat allocation, meaning the 2k condi damage builds we have now are going to be that much more effective, and then there’s vuln adding another 1-25% more damage on top of that.

Skills like Bonfire are going to be much more about keeping the condition on people, but other types like poison volley are going to be condition spike skills.

I made a statement. The way in which you responded made it clear you had apparently taken exception to my statement about compensation, though it was never directed at you to begin with. The obvious response on my end was to reaffirm that you (singular) and you (plural, for anyone else) are not owed anything based on mechanical changes.

Whether or not you actually believe this is yet to be determined, as you haven’t expressly stated one way or the other. I don’t really care too much if you implied it either. I just want to end that discussion before it begins.

They’re aren’t really many more traits built around virtues for guardian than other classes. The skill changes offered provide definite niches for the two skills.

Signet of Courage is great for healing. Better than Renewed Focus and you can still Battle Presence with it for even more aoe healing.

"Feel My Wrath" gives back our only access to quickness and gives access to fury all while on a short cooldown. Another 30s shout is great for trooper/pure of voice synergy, and for runes with elite skull usage effects. You can use it 3 times as often as RF.

I don’t believe RF is even all that beloved for its virtue recharge, but rather the invulnerability. There are still a lot of complaints about the active and passive effects of the virtues, so I wouldn’t assume getting them back is the real prize being sought after. Traited virtues are another thing, but not everyone is doing to specialize in virtues, nor might they need the invulnerability. SoC and "FMW" provide different and realistic options.

Drakonath.7096:

Ghotistyx.6942:

Resistance is 100% condition damage reduction. Much more potent than 33% (also, thieves and warriors get access off the top of my head, so it’s not revenant only).

Also, vitality becomes that much more important. Shaman, magi, carrion, sentinel, valkyrie, all that.

Like someone else already mentioned, retal procs on attacks, conditions are applied by attacks.

Just because one thing changes didn’t mean you’re owed “compensation”

Maybe google the definition of compensation. This would be balancing.

As for resistance. 1 skill granting resistance for a few seconds isnt much for counter play. I am willing to bet 100$ that if the new condi changes are released exactly how they described it will be nerfed/changed within 2 weeks.

No amount of googling is going to change the fact you aren’t owed anything. Considering the way they’ve described condition changes is pretty broad, I’m also fairly sure it could be interpreted many different ways, and none of them could be the way Anet is working on.

The duration of FmW could be one second. Is 1s effect on 30s CD too spammy for you?

Apparently he hasn’t played the game in awhile. He sees builds posted on meta battle, but has no context to what those builds mean. He draws conclusions from that, and then complains on the forums about those conclusions. I had no compelling reason to answer him directly, when he draws conclusions so abstractly. But perhaps I had a hope, that when he read “I don’t play this game because of opinions from a website”, that he’d realize, “Hey, I should go play the game to see what’s actually going on in game and draw my own conclusions!”. Apparently I was mistaken in that hope. Instead he calls it " trolling ", even though that’s not the correct usage of that word, and asks other people for their opinion. Luckily other people are around to tell him he’s off his rocker in a much nicer way.

Technically his question was about the upcoming HoT changes affecting the " dominance " of GS, but he clearly hasn’t read any of that information, or he’d be able to draw his own conclusions about that too. In any regard, I’m not one to help people who don’t help themselves, despite how filled with sass I am at the time.

Tyber Valens.5148:

Ghotistyx.6942:

All I read was:

“There’s a website, with opinions on it, that prevents me from playing the game.”

I see the forum trolls are as snide as ever. I used the website as an example/indicator of problem. For those of you that are bright enough see the issue I would like to hear your opinions.

If you actually played the game, instead of calling whatever you don’t like as " trolling ", you’d know the answer to your first question already.

Every time someone asks for a movement speed buff, it gets delayed by another 6 months.

All I read was:

“There’s a website, with opinions on it, that prevents me from playing the game.”

Resistance is 100% condition damage reduction. Much more potent than 33% (also, thieves and warriors get access off the top of my head, so it’s not revenant only).

Also, vitality becomes that much more important. Shaman, magi, carrion, sentinel, valkyrie, all that.

Like someone else already mentioned, retal procs on attacks, conditions are applied by attacks.

Just because one thing changes didn’t mean you’re owed “compensation”

Megamanxz.5028:

ITS MY GAME I WANT IT NOW

Play it when you need it. J.G. Wentworth.

Conditions won’t have diminishing returns, and they’ll get better scaling, so that your proposed vuln change would absolutely not be in line with the condition changes.

ITT: almost no one knows what they’re talking about, but they insist they have the answers

(Brb, posting this to every other thread on the forums)

It’s coming soon™. They didn’t expressly say it would be the very next update, but they did mention in their 4 hour stream they want to have another, shorter stream to go over the changes they’ve made since, so definitely expect something like that before the actual update drops.

I’m familiar with all of this. It’s not that I disagree that toughness and hpow synergize, just that the effects are overestimated. Like I said, it seems Honor is now Magi friendly, with certain traits proccing on precision, mace trait combining blocks and healing power (like you mentioned, good for direct damage counters when low of toughness), aegis proccing healing, and particularly this trait as a catalyst for vitality into outgoing healing. It all seems to work fairly well. However, when it comes to helping your party with the thing everyone does once their other priorities are taken care of, Damage, Magi’s is pretty lacking. One reason I put Shaman’s higher than Magi’s is because I think you can get more damage out of a potential burn build with FoW and Honor than I do Magi. To get the most benefit from the trait, you should be stacking vitality, but even the two best arrays are pretty lackluster. So the real question is, are the upcoming changes going to be significant enough to make building Magi or Shaman worthwhile? or are they going to stay at the bottom, only useful to mix into a Cleric or Settler build. Time will tell exactly how useful such a build could be.

They’re making the base of all stats 1000 instead of 926, which is a 74 point improvement for power, precision, toughness, and vitality each, or 296 free points. They’ve changed the scaling on conditions and I’m sure healing, so that’s change enough. I don’t know what they plan to do about the percentile changes.

In wvw or pve this isn’t a big issue. Replace some of those points with a different piece of armor or your weapons or something if you need to. In PvP I don’t know what they plan to do.

I don’t think many people in this thread understand what concepts like “broken” really mean. JI isn’t used for the damage, and CoP has no damage, so really it’s just Smite Condition. Fire and Air sigils can be used by anyone, and are not an aspect of medi guards themselves.

The mediation healing provides 245 hps if everything is spammed off cooldown. That’s not a number that’s really breaking the bank, nor are the skills going to be spammed off cooldown in any practical purpose. Warriors could be running heal sig and still bring healing shouts as a zerker, but we aren’t complaining about their hps in a zerk amulet.

The best part is I don’t even run zerker medi guard. It’s just something you have to plan around, like thieves being sword, mesmer being shatter, or eles being cele.

Right, that kind of build would be much better than using magi, which begs the question, what niche sites Magi fill? It doesn’t offer much to help your damage, and there isn’t enough defense to really keep you alive in heated situations. I think people underestimate vitality and over over estimate healing power with toughness, but having no toughness is a recipe for being exposed by direct damage. It really forces Magi into a mixing role (which is does well enough. Magi armor + clerics everything else, or magi + settlers/apoth).

The real point of the thread though is Force of Will, and like I said, just by taking the trait you’re getting 13% more ally healing. Stacking more vitality will pretty much put you in a support only role (magi), or perhaps you can ignore the healing power for aoe heals that have a high base and low scaling, if any exist for guardian (soldiers or sentinels)… Or perhaps even shaman? Will condis be just effective enough you can rely on them enough for a shaman build?

I personally think the trait being in the position it is winds up being a perfect placement. This is obviously not a baseline effect like some in the ele forums would have you believe. It’s not impactful enough for a major slot, and I don’t think anyone is going to argue it should be in the adept or master minor slots.

But like Obtena mentioned, we’re in the guardian forums, not the ele forums.

I’d be thinking something more like
http://dulfy.net/gw2traits#build=AgIBtAK0Brg~

This would be a very hybrid style build with Longbow and Mace/Torch, but you could easily get quite a few damage modifiers going while having all that burn.

^ that’s what I remember hearing. This trait in particular, and Honor as a whole, look to fit well with Magi stats. Precision to proc things, vitality and healing power to ignore conditions and help allies. I just don’t know how well Magi’s is going to perform compared to now, and I already rank it as the worst stat array. By taking the trait though, you’ll be getting a free 13% out going healing even without any investment in vitality, so that’s still a very good option for anything healing based.

I answered the question directly. If OP wants to stay fresh air that’s fine, but condi s/f fits the bill as "a starter build more survivable than fresh air ".

For a starter set, I’d actually recommend Diva’s condi s/f build. The main reasons being:

• It slows down the game. This allows you to become more familiar with the tools at your disposal.
• It allows you to become more intimate with your opponent during a fight, giving you more experience of what to avoid at all costs and what you can safely absorb.
• It reduces the impact of mistakes which will allow you to recognize and adapt later on.
• Diva’s build also reduces build complexity, which allows you to think more about the mechanics of the fight then the mechanics of your build. Other builds are a bit more open when you want to add the attunement dance in, but even Fresh Air still centers around air attunement.

The tooltip is not quite accurate. I think the devs mentioned something about it, but it’s hard for me to check due to how fiddly it works on mobile (my computer is under repair)

I had an idea of what this thread was going to be before I clicked on it.

I was not disappointed.

(Also, I’m a fan of things having a lower base and higher scaling)

You seem to have a bit of misinformation. Most weapons have a place in all three have modes, the exception being shield. Focus is definitely the most common off hand, but sword is definitely a good pairing. GS and Hammer each have their places, and staff is mostly used in wvw zerging, or for bunkers in PvP. One of the keys in knowing which weapon to take, is what kind of build you want to run. Hammer and Mace are great for symbol builds, as they can put them down quickly and repetitively. Sword and GS are great for movement as they have a teleport and leap respectively, scepter is your main range option, and focus and torch are your bursty off hands with an emphasis on aoe and single target/burning respectively. Shield has niche uses with its knock back and protection, and staff is useful for tagging a lot of enemies, swiftness, a burst of might, and the line of warding (utility as needed). Either your weapons will determine your ideal build, or your build will determine your ideal weapons.

The fact that it was picked out to be mentioned is where all the hype is from. Being centered around your target is the change PW needs after it for the target cap put on. I think we really need to help push the desire for PW to be target based, or more accurately, centered on the thing that passive VoJ procs on. In fact, I’d rather have PW centered on enemy than remove its target cap, that’s how significant this change is.

I swear there wasn’t a spoiler first time I read it

See, at first I think everyone is serious with their name ideas because they go to such great lengths to defend them, but then this joker right here is actually kidding, and I don’t know what to do with myself anymore.

SlayerSixx.5763:

https://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Might_of_the_Protector

20+ with strength runes and no bonus from virtues.

Assuming you’ve just taken a chains and smite as this individual is dropping their torch 5, it isn’t that big of a stretch to assume that you can get 9+ stacks of might with ease during your shelter. If you’re just randomly popping this skill without any prior setup, then you’re doing it wrong. If you’re running sword with this, ZD would be better in almost every situation with better utility, more damage, and a lesser channel time.

We aren’t talking about other skills though. You were listing counters to cleansing flame, and Shelter definitely doesn’t last 4 1/4s. Cleansing Flame has a base 1000 damage with a 3.3 modifier, 400 range, aoe, and can cleanse 9 conditions from multiple allies. Could it be made better? Of course, every skill can. But if you cannot find a use for it now, that is not our problem.

Hunter.4783:

Most agree traps suck and are so far the poorest addition when it comes to adding skills for elite specs. Just look at mesmer and necro….its much much better.

You could say that we are better off than mesmers and necros but that point fails because
1) That only applies to PVE
2) Just because our core traits are good does NOT mean they have to add sub-par abilities and traits

Shield has been crap since day 1 and everyone knows it has not been changed and worse of all, there are NO plans to change it as of now.

Longbow aint even needed if scepter projectile speed were buffed. From the PVP stream you can tell Longbow is an overall survivability LOSS over scepter/focus. Anyone can see it clear as day.

This whole elite spec (DH) was added to band aid some of the flaws the guardian has. Its funny because if the aforementioned changes were made, Longbow and DH will become redundant

PS: How many of you are going to use the heal trap? Yeah, i rest my case

I don’t see why we even still come here to give our opinions. Clearly this man has life figured out for all of us. We need not fear what the night brings, for our protector is nigh. Verily, he shall being salvation unto us, for the world is as he speaks.

Come now, were on the guardian forums. You should know better than to think Shelter is going to give you all 9 might on a 4 1/4s channeled skill. That’s an embarrassing oversight.

Honestly all I want from Tempest is sword use to make a cosplay character. Whatever it ends up being, it’ll be useful in some aspect, so I’ll tailor it to that purpose.

I like theory crafting, so the elite specializations and build changes are interesting regardless, but aside from that, sword is really all I’m hoping for.

I, on behalf of the entire GW2 community, would like t thank you for speaking on our behalf without consultation, as it wouldn’t have been necessary anyway.

Also, thank you for refraining from giving any sort of legitimate suggestions, as those are also unnecessary.

Thank you again for insulting the devs while asking for their attention and consideration of the effort you didn’t make.

You truly are invaluable, and a rock to this community

I didn’t want to be the first to say it. It’s probably the worst suggestion I’ve seen on the forums in recent memory

I’ll admit, cleansing flame takes a bit to be super useful. Supreme justice and permeating wrath usually aren’t what people want to go for when they use virtues. I’d be happy with cleansing flame only removing 3 condis, but cleansing yourself also. You keep some team support and make it a tad more solo friendly. It would also compare with necro dagger, which transfers condis, as opposed to just cleansing them.

I myself don’t take pve seriously. Likewise, I don’t take PvP or wvw seriously. Doesn’t mean I shouldn’t know what’s going on with the three games modes. The was one paragraph I stated relating to PvP, denoted by the “in PvP” start. It’s fairly obvious by op’s phrasing he’s talking about pve, which would be easy to miss if your only focused on one aspect instead of the whole picture.

Cleaning Flame (and torch in general) already has a theme built around it. Torch 4 already gives burning, and a lot of it. Torch 5 also gives burning, but in a different way. Supreme Justice + Permeating Wrath. Cleansing Flames target cap is three. Supreme justice changes VoJ to proc on the third hit. At (relative) worst you’re getting 3 procs, at best you can get 10. With permeating wrath it’s aoe. Likewise, any allies get one condition removed per hit. It’s a niche skill but it definitely serves a purpose. It’s petty good for hybrids actually, as it still has that decent direct damage component. You’ve got decent physical damage, high burn potential, high cleansing, range, and a low cooldown. I can make use of it in every game mode. It’ll be even better come HoT.

How could you call something balanced based on forum posts that haven’t gone through testing, let alone live?

In PvP, hammer is part of the medi meta. Granted, it’s largely in part of some high level players did well with it, and it became popular. Meta doesn’t mean “best”.

Hammer+GS had no noticeable or appreciable damage loss compared to sw/f. Similarly, mace has no appreciable loss compared to sword, and can often be better. The weapons perform much closer than people think.

Only bad players (in a very derogatory sense) complain about light fields. As someone who consistently used hammer in pve and wvw, I and my ele friends can reliably blast might even through my symbols.

You’re going to get people who complain about anything you do, so pick what affords you the most fun and run with it. You can’t control what other people think, or if they’re having fun, but you can control if you’re having fun.