Guild Wars 2

You all know it, however not all are willing to admit it (engie players)

Their pressure is insane, especially when fighting on point. They can bunker and reliably destroy anyone 1v1. When a “bunker” class has such firepower is nothing but balanced. People complained about the old bunker guard. How about 1 with condie pressure coming close to necros with the “oh kitten” buttons of warriors?

All maps are doing is farming chests while ignoring every single other event in the map. As such its impossible to get anything done in silverwastes.

Can we get a nerf on this, its more gamebreaking than anything else in Gw2 right now

What im seeing here is some people try to turn Raids into a Mini Tequal type of encounter while being remarkably scared of organized 5+ content:

I don’t understand whats everyone’s infatuation with a spam 1 scenario where numbers > skill and there all you have to do is join at a certain time, afk for 30 min till the commanders assign 4-5 people who know what they are doing and then collect loot after a trivialized boss fight.

Do we really want more of those? haven’t you had enough of those for a lifetime?

Just bring back old school raid content: You only need to look as far as the old DoA in GW1. I won’t refer to WoW as complex encounters are not easy to design without a trinity system (tank, healer, DPS)

DoA Hardmode required you to :

1: Have knowledge of the encounters
2: Design and adapt your party around it
3: Optimize gear and attributes
4: Be willing to put in the time to learn the encounters
5: Avoid careless and irresponsible play. If party wiped, you lost ALL progress

These characteristics should be taken in account when designing a raid encounter, or endgame, call it whatever.

If you dont add mechanics to punish careless play, punish lack of skill/knowledge, and to encourage players to ADAPT to the environment, you might as well scrap this whole raid “nonsense” and design more dungeons.

Even though GW2 is primarily aimed at the casual audience, it also needs to have endgame or challenging content where you can’t simply walk in with suboptimal gear and traits and faceroll through it

Umm, what makes u think they are even going to bother changing anything in fractals this year?

Took them like 3 months to come up with new living story content even though thats their primary focus in the game.

Don’t expect/overhype yourself about anything for this year, at least this way you won’t be disappointing

They actually can use infusions as some sort of gear progression too. And they can limit them to raid content only. It would be a way to being gear progression w/o harming the rest of the more casual playerbase safely tucked into their massive zergs farming cursed shores.

Additionally, they can adhere to their horizontal gear progression by introducing a set of armor/weapons and aesthetically upgrading them with more content you are able to clear. Similar to the fractal capacitor, but done right.
– You clear first tier bosses —> first armor/weapon upgrade
– You clear second tier bosses —> second, more fancy looking armor/weapon upgrade and so on.

There are literally a hundreed ways they can go at it but im afraid they are gonna pick the worst route and make a mess of this too.

The problem with GW2 is that its a game with tons of potential but its slowly heading downhill due to the way content is delivered.

Everyone and their mother has pointed out that LIving story is not enough to keep players occupied due to 0 replay ability. Yet Anet either doesn’t listen, or understand this simple point.

The game will thrive anew when Anet introduces raids/endgame content or something more akin to an expansion with lots of things to keep people busy for longer than 2h every 2 weeks

Asmodeus.5782:

Hunter, guilds with thousands of players, like TTS, are soulless behemoths and participating in them brings me no pleasure whatsoever. And most normal large guilds won’t stand for a non-representing leech.

Usually people like you love to generalize without the slightest idea about the person with whom they’re talking. I really have no desire to explain my love for truly difficult content and hatred for megaguilds and/or zergs.

I just hope that my small guild will be able to use the lfg system to find some other, smaller groups, without need to socialize with hundreds in order to play raids. Why the hell does that irk you so?

Ah stop being so melodramatic.

Fact of the matter is large organized zergs are part of this game and a ton of players like em, just look at WvW and Teq/wyrm/Temple bosses.

There is a reason why u have 5 guild slots. Learn how to use them. You like to be in a 5 person guild? Thats fine, however there is also a reason why the guild cap is 500 players.

You choose to play the game casually in a small party format ala old school games with an online component and thats great, but at the end you will miss up on some content. That is the nature of MMOs.

If i don’t ever wanna party with anyone the game allows me to hit max cap and finish personal storyline but i cannot in good consciousness for everything to be changed according to my playstyle because its not what MMOs are.

There is nothing stopping you from asking more people to join ur guild and play together.

Asmodeus.5782:

Valento.9852:

Keep in mind that the main subject is about an ADDITION called “raids”, not wiping current dungeons or instances. So if YOU are satisfied with what we have now, by all means keep playing those, but aside from pathetical rage all these hatred posts contribute to nothing.

The unnerfed and actually somewhat difficult dungeon content, after the trait-related rescaling, has been limited to 2 dungeons + fractals. So yeah.

I’d love to see something that adds content for me, instead of demolishing it (hi, megaserver and NPE!), so I really hope that small guilds will be included without the need to search for alliances and switching the representation all the time.

Really, considering most people pug dungeons and fractals nowadays it shoudln’t be much harder to find 9 other people compared to 4.

And you have guilds like TTS with thousands of players. You also have 5 guild slots for a reason. Just a large guild on the side and afk them for assistance when u need to. Easy enough.

Usually people like you who complain about larger scale raid/organized content do so because they are unable to be successful or perform adequately (read: get kicked for failing hard) so they want to just be able to solo it at their own pace. Unfortunately MMOs are not single player/3 player dungeon running extravaganza. Its about time people understood that.

Wanderer.3248:

If they add a gear grind I’m outta here

Bye, have fun playing League of Legends.

Gear treadmill is a feature of MMOs and will persist till the whole genre dies or changes. Either like it, or quit.

You know full well legendary tier is eventually to make it into the game or maybe an increase in level cap. So you might as well quit while u are ahead

Asmodeus.5782:

Eric.6109:

if they do introduce raids, i hope that there would be some sort of scaling. not all of us have big enough guilds to field 40-man groups, regardless of guild size. maybe start from 10-man with increments of 2?

Exactly this. My guild has 5 people online at most and we’re happy with this state of affairs, so the whole raid content thing is something I won’t be able to even glance at unless it’ll scale back nicely and allow multiple guilds to participate in it at once.

If it’s gonna be a large-guild exclusive thing, then bugger it. Bugger it all to hell.

The Community has been dying for something more competitive and akin to MMOs. All you have now is mindless dungeon grind or 111111 spam in larger events.

Its about time we get something middle of the way but much harder. It gives players something to look and strive towards.

MMOs are generally designed to be played only with many players. I don’t see why you would ask or enjoy casual content which can be run with 5 people. Tons of other games on the market like that.

And im sure each of u has a few friends online on other guards. So ask them for help when the time comes.

And funny enough even guild missions require more than 5 people. I guess you never got to see them either.

I just made a post enough this too in fact but i have to dissagree on Wars.

As far as Meditations go:

We COMPLETELY counter Wars. We have enough blocks and blinds to avoid any real bursts which rocking enough burst healing to reliably trade blows and come out on top.

Only way wars stand a chance vs a guard is kite and abuse 3x adren Long bow burst. In that case play defensive or just avoid the scorched area.

Any other warrior weapon can be tanked while trading blows. Now to mention warriors are inherently punished by going melee vs guardian due to symbols and retal.

GS mace/focus trolls warriors quite well. Try it; even more blocks, heals and symbol dmg. Only real threat is eviscerate

Healway does not work so well anymore. Medis are the new Kings of skirmishes

Try it out yourself. its hilarious. Depending on the warrior skill level you might just be able to face tank them.

Med guards are the now the true kings of melee.

D/D comes in second ofc, but i find that our burst and cooldowns let us just put in enough pressure to get them on the defensive for a while if not force them off point and whatnot

Gaile Gray.6029:

Lobo Dela Noche.5127:

Why can’t the survey be something like
on a scale of 1-5 how happy are you with XXXX
out of these 5 things which was your most liked
out of these 5 things which was your least liked
please rate these 5 items in order of most liked to least liked
on a scale of 1-5 how would you rate your experience from levels 1-5, 5-10,10-15, etc
on a scale of 1-5 how would you rate the speed at which you gain skills, the speed at which you gain traits, the speed at which you unlock the ability to do XXXX
what things would you like added to the game out of these 5
what things would you like changed out of these 5
how is your overall satisfaction with XXXX

I think some of these could help you with interpreting what your metrics are telling you. Rather than telling everyone what someone thinks or wants the metrics to tell them.

Now those are interesting ideas! That form of survey makes a lot more sense than the one requiring a answer coupled with an essay question, or the simple yes/no. A few are too vague, but overall, they have good potential. Thanks for these ideas.

Ah come on Gale, don’t act as if no one at the gaming industry never thought of surveys before.

Heck, Blizzard had an ingame survey for EVERY SINGLE QUEST/EVENT during their open betas starting with Burning crusade which was like….8 years ago?

As some intelligent person said, the only reason you don’t have surveys is to hide the massive amounts of negative feedback you would get from most of the recent changes.

The REAL problem is 2 fold.

1) Lack of any real new content.

You can argue AC remake or Canach “dungeon” (….lol) are content but running through AC now, its really 95% similar to launch to the point it feeling the same. What they did were bug fixes to broken bosses, not much else. And Canach dungeon is….lol or was i should say. In any case, with the exception is fractals, anything else is exactly as it was at launch.

2) lack of meaningful rewards or a character progression system. Playing dress up, or as they like to call it “horizontal” character progression can only last people so far before they get bored. You need real ways to advance your characters. Ascended items were simply a slap in the face to any player because they failed to give any meaningful upgrades yet were/are a grindfest. Vertical progression is a necessary evil to any MMO because it keeps players interesting and dedicated. Getting a new sword which increases overall DPS by 20% is sure as hell a cause for celebration for most players. And its that feeling that keeps them logging on.

Does it really matter whether they set the fractal cap at 50 or 100? Its the same content run over and over again to create a false sense of progress.

The real problem is the ridiculous and broken reward system. Getting an uninfused ring after clearing lvl 50 fractal is a slap on the face to any player…

So, turns out that people are either blind, biased, or fanbois are taking over forums.

I keep reading how the living story is “exciting new content” and how fractals are considered “endgame” or some other nonsense like this.

Lets go over this slowly shall we? How many times have you run the season 2 story episodes on average? I would take a guess and say only once to twice for people who wanted the achis. And then everyone didn’t bother with them anymore because you know, they are BORING and the rewards are a joke.

Anet can try to shove that down my throat as “exciting” but to me its usually wall of text followed by 2 min of actual combat, as the last episode was proof enough of this. So explain to me how 10 min of reading through walls of text and 2 min of combat is considered exciting in any way shape or form. And not to stop there but Anet has the audacity to take a 3 month break after the most insulting episode to be added yet.

Maybe most posters here are fairly new at the game but for us players who started at launch there is absolutely nothing to do anymore. And the sad thing is there is NOTHING to look forward to.

Maybe i should stress this even more. As the game stands right now, there is NOTHING to look forward to. New living story episode? Oh ya in 2 months!!!. Are you kittening kidding me? You really expect to keep players hooked up that long by simply farming rocks?

Now lets go over fractals shall we? We have technically been running the same fractals for….gosh don’t know how long now but its over a year now. They added 3 more which are technically a recycle of the old living story content. Again, besides the original fractals there has been NO NEW CONTENT ADDED. Everything else has been recycled.

Think of these 2 points before you yap more mouth claiming how exciting things are right now.

ColinJohanson.2394:

Romek.4201:

@colin

maby you should than not make a blogpost with things you will give us this year BUT

a blogpost with things you work on

i guess people would be happy to read things like: we work on housing but far from release, we have 3 dungeons in beta status, we had to restart work on precursor crafting and its back to alpha status ………

something like this

That would also break the company policy of what we’re allowed to discuss in regards of what is in development

Though I wonder if we went a little more broad and kept a rolling “top categorical issues” the community team communicated or owned that summarizing high level things the development team is aware of and might or might not be working on, but see’s as core fundamental issues to address, and players just had constant brainstorm threads on those topics – if it’d at least get us halfway there.

You know Colin, this is kinda funny, considering fractals and dungeons have been ruled out from the recent interviews. So either this new project(s) you are working on are completely revolutionary or there is nothing being worked on besides the Living Story, and we all know how successful that has been so far.

Take companies like Blizzard, they announce months ahead for even minor changes or content being added. There is info about content patches also months in advance before they are released. Usually the community there is fully aware of what’s being worked on instead of being completely in the dark.

Any average player who read the interviews last weekend when asked what they think Anet is working on will give the following 2 answers:

- I have no idea
- They are working on nothing

Now you tell me Colin, how does this whole mess look like in the eyes of the player base?

The problem is why Devs, with a strait face mind you, tell you that after 2 years they still have NO PLANS to add anything different to any of the CORE AREAS of gameplay.

The only thing being worked right now is the Living Story, the biggest joke of the MMO market.

Now excuse me when as a player im virtually told that there will be nothing added to the platter for the next 6 months at the very least. So now I wonder why I should even continue to play if all I am doing is grinding in cursed shore/try top or any of the fractals for the 100th time with virtually no reward???

I can’t believe Regina is telling us all to “suck it up” in such a cheerful way; it really makes me /uninstall right now. I look at other MMOs which are all pushing content now more than ever and I wonder why I am still playing a game where the devs have either no idea what they are doing or have completely wrong priorities.

Living story? really? the joke of the MMO market right now. S1 failed and you STILL decide to focus on it. Free DLC every 2 weeks? Are you kidding me? The last “DLC” had walls of text and 5 minutes worth of combat. Can you really call that DLC with a strait face?

WoW is releasing their biggest expansion to date still, yet you guys haven’t even delivered 1/10 of a true expansion PERMANENET content during this whole time.
All you did was change the textures of 2 areas, add in more zerg/poorly balanced/crap content which revolves standing in 1 area and spamming 1 and calling it “DLC”

Come on Anet, I expected more. /Afk till you pull your head out of your kitten.

The Details….the bump map…

An armor with an actual chest plate (not painted on top of a skin tight shirt)

Im truly amazed how good it looks. I have been staring at it for the past 10 min in the character select screen and I can’t get enough of it.

And it dyes so wonderfully…amazing.

Keep it up Anet!

Hayashi.3416:

As a by the way, they did try creating content only for elite players.

One of the results was the Aetherblade pirates during the elections, which most people never completed.

One of the results was Tequatl, which is still failed by any map that doesn’t organise at least 20 minutes ahead of schedule – and often fails even at longer setups.

And one of the results was the Triple Trouble Wurm, which even TTS doesn’t have a full success rate at, and which most other guilds generally fail more often than they succeed.

Dry Top was a far more successful project. There’s still only about 1 or 2 instances during elite high periods (0 in the mainly casual periods) capable of reaching and sustaining t5, so people who like playing on the razor’s edge get to strive for that goal, but at the same time, t3 is 100% achievable by SOLOISTS, and t4 generally doable by any normal map as long as there’s at least 10 players or so who are willing to put in the effort for that. Those who perform best get the best rewards, those who don’t do as well get to earn some, but not as much, and those who can’t be too bothered about personal performance can still ride on the coattails of those who do through LFG taxis.

I’m not sure if you’d consider that an endgame, but these really do exist.

The aetherblade thing was stupid and something they put together in a day, Don’t compare that with WoW style raids, lulz.

Tequal is full zone zerg. It is NOT an organized raid content. Again it does NOT compare with classic raid content because of the open world setup. In WoW this type of content was considered the most casual and easy time and was there to provide alts or new max lvl players access to starter raid gear. It does not even come CLOSE to the glory of some of the WoW raids, like nax, Sunwell, ulduar, Frozen citadel….

Triple WUrm: Read tequal

Wanna know something funny? Its sad seeing FF14 and wildstar top GW2, especially the former. That game has been bleeding surscribers since launch.

I cannot take these data w/o a grain a salt since it does not show total player base, but if games like FF14 and heck even D3 have a larger player games like GW2….well kitten.

The lack of endgame is what is going to cripple GW2 in the not so long term. Already people are bored of the game. Guilds are breaking apart due to people quitting. Its true GW2 china upped the playerbase but it still does not make up for the fraction that are quitting everyday.

Unlike WoW and other more traditional gear centric MMOs, there is absolutely NO REASON to come back to this one. For example, WoW would release a new raid tier with 2-3 new dungeons or raids as well new quest hubs, quests and of course new tier of items. These large updates would happen every 2 months or so, keeping the content fresh for many players. Simply clearing that content would net you powerful new gear which would make your character stronger and give you some sense of achievement.

Enter GW2 with the LS update every 2 week model. As of right now, there is absolutely NO REPLEYABILITY to this content, much less any sense of progression and reward. You log in, play the poorly scripted story for 1-2 hours, get your fair share of blues and greens and quit for the rest of the week. Because this is all what you are gonna get. And from what we keep hearing, there is no plan to change it anytime soon.

Some people here are delusional, thinking that the “no endgame” or “free gear for everyone” model triumphs the old one. The gear centric model is good because it was proven for years no end that it works. This one…im not so sure

Zacchary.6183:

Amins.3710:

Clearly that’s not a guardian… she escaped.

But she is… she just kicked his kitten .

Mesmer was nub: She was sitting on symbols and WW, Not dodging/kiting enough, Prolly didn’t even have deceptive evasion either and was autoattacking

Amins.3710:

Hunter.4783:

Sword teleport + IJ on (flying?) critter. L2P plz

CLEARLY Guardians are in a good place for now

Unfortunatly, you didn’t see pay attention because she bursted w/ her SoW + S#2 + JI for max dmg and covering w/ blind for full burst potential.

L2P Still stands for you Hunter, even after the 2 years… /sadpandaface

Do you know what S-A-R-C-A-S-M means?

Sword teleport + IJ on (flying?) critter. L2P plz

CLEARLY Guardians are in a good place for now

OP is right to be mad, the whole “content” can be completed in 1h by playing ’casually" at best.

OH ya, but we get a few more jumping puzzles to compensate!

We waited over 4 months for 1h of story content with poorly scripted encounters, a tiny new area you can cross in over 2 minutes and a few more jumping puzzles.

Excuse me if I am feeling upset and disappointed right now.

Anet needs to realise more of the same does NOT make a great game, it makes you lose players faster

There is nothing wrong with 20-25 man raid content which would actually make the whole experience much more enjoyable than the current “meta” which involves ferrying random players into your map while trying to drive out whoever is in the map but unwilling to attend the event.

We can all agree by now tequal, and even more so, the 3 headed wyrm is a mess and generally not worth the headache besides getting the achies done.

On top of it all, we have the extremely kittenty reward system in this game which needs to be addressed before any kind of raid content was put in.

If lets say, tequal and wyrm dropped a guaranteed ascended item, or an ascended item token, they would be taking MUCH more seriously by everyone.

Seems like a L2Play issue to me.

The guardian burst comes from shield of wrath, (focus #5) which is on a 45 sec cooldown and telegraphed as kitten as well as from torch 4 which is on 15 sec cooldown.

Beside that, the guard has autoattacks as the next most threatening thing.

As long as u dodge out of focus 5 burst his measly 14k health should be gone in seconds if u get a BS down.

If u play aggressive, a glass cannon guardian simply has no means to take such punishment

or saved lion arch
or helped save the day when the old queens jubilee was hijacked by scarlet
… (list goes on)

Heck even lord Faren does not remember you saved him…

And all your convo options when u talk to these NPCs revolve around “I heard that…” or “rumor is that….”

Are you kidding me Anet? Is this for real?

That’s the whole problem with the roaming guardian, even though you might be able to beat 6/8 other classes consistently the moment you get 1v2ed you will die with no way of escape.

All these builds are nice and all but none of this solves the core issue, which is our mobility and escape options

I hear you,

WvW roaming is plagued by condi engies, thieves and warriors, 3 classes which can either counter you or simply outrun you, so no luck there. Oh ya, the occasional black water Mesmer which everyone ignores and runs by

sPVP has either complete and utter nubs doing it for achi points or the occasional dragon ranked player. Saddly, its a lot more of the former…

I cannot take seriously PVP videos where the guy you are fighting sits inside your Symbol of Wrath for the whole duration while taking a WW to the face.

Show clips with more competent players please.

At first you would think that sPVP players are more competent than WvW ones, but after this last patch its no longer the case.

Dee Jay.2460:

Being by far the best at certain roles is hardly a good indication of a balanced class.

80% of “support” in this game is distilled into the Guardian class. Stack enough of them in WvW and you make any zerg immortal.

The fact that they have been the ONLY viable midbunkers in sPvP since launch shows how ridiculous the class is. It’s just that we become so complacant with Guardians being nigh immortal and adding more support than the 4 other classes in the group that we think this is OK.

It’s not. Guardians may be ok in a 1v1 basis but when you add in group dynamics it’s clear this class is entirely broken. It has WAY too much support and innate tankiness, way more than any other class in the game. And it has not been good for the game.

So now guardians are OP??… Lulz

Someone needs to learn to play the game

You either trait courage to give stability or Resolve to give you condi cleanse. Any smart man would take the latter, hence why you have no stability in your build.

The build fails either way im sorry, having to pick 1 or the other is reason enough for me not to consider Spirit weapons

I think you should rename your thread to “What build NOT to bring in PVP”

because that’s what I got from watching ur videos. With condi pressure more rampant than ever before, you chose the worst possible build to deal with it.

No Stability, minimal condi cleanse. You might as well bend over and take it

It doesn’t matter which class needs the most attention. Guardians have received the LEAST attention for as long as we can remember. the ONLY positive change was the buff to meditations and purging flames, both which happened like a year ago.

Its about time this class gets some attention too.

Super Riceman.8702:

I have an idear

Amplified Wrath can be changed so that it makes the passive of Virtue of Justice also grants Swiftness for 5s every 8s. That way guardian may be able to roam like other classes but the trait is positioned so that it cant easily be in a tanky build.

For Kindled Zeal, it can maybe life steal on burn ticks, that way a dmg build can sustain itself like a support build.

As for Spirit Weapons they can be changed from AI to something like conjured weapons but the skills would be based on the existing guardian weapons (EX: Spirit Hammer has guardian hammer skills but only has x amount of charges)

Radiant retaliation can be changed so that when a condition is applied to you twice or more within x secs, it will transfer that condition to the sender.
That way Zeal can be defensive and Guardian can apply conditions it doesn’t have access to and it discourages spam

Communal Defenses can be changed so that Purity also affects allies every 15s

Force of Will can be changed so it gives you x% of toughness (or %damage reduction) per missing health

Purity of Body can be changed so that nearby enemies are dazed .5 sec every time you cleanse a condition

Those are some interesting ideas, but Anet will never implement them. At this point they wont make radical game changes, only number and maybe trait merges.

For spirit weapons all they have to do is change them back to invulnerable, and play with damage/utility numbers from there.

Condi builds are a complete different story however, to make condi viable for a guardian they need to allow guardians some way to spam either bleeds, or another cover condition, say vulnerability on auto AND allow for easier application of burning. As of now you have JI and F1 which apply burning but once that is cleansed, or runs out, you are gonna have a hard time to reapply it. Not to mention the amount of traits you have to spend just to make condi viable is ridiculous. The other way to put burning is every kittens or 4 untraited but that also is 1 sec and not very controlled. Besides, not many are gonna let you chain attacks on them in PVP.

I like picking on warriors but I think the warrior class is better designed. You have the sword auto which can be used for both power and condi builds depending on the preference. Why can’t the guardian be the same?

Why can’t Guardian sword at least be TRAITED to apply bleeding? Same thing can be done with symbols, by making the symbolic exposure vulnerability last 10 sec or so. Anything to provide cover condi for burning.

And even still, if guardians go settler, or rabid gear, they are stuck with 10k HP to work with, which is not very feasible. This is one of the reasons guardians are forced to put points in honor.

As you see people, the problem with the guardian is 2 fold:

1. Not enough traits and weapons to make condi viable
2. There is not much room to play around with builds and stats because mainly of the lack of HP, which forces guardians to at least build some HP. Unlike warriors who have a ridiculous HP tool and can forego HP w/o repercussions.

(note, point #2 is mainly for PVP and WvW)

If you think the guardian is mainly a support and should remain such, then yes ofc they are balanced. But if you wanna adhere to the Anet ideology that every class should be able to fulfill each role, the guardian falls short.

Having to rely on sigils to get a condi build to start being valiable is the most ridiculous argument I have ever heard.

Lets look at condi warriors shall we? They don’t need a sigil for bleeding, do they?

AND warriors get 6k more health for free too so don’t get me started on how “tanky” guardians are.

And you still have not provided any argument on how kittenty spirit weapons are to this day.

Why not?

Every class got some goodies this patch, BUT guardians who got nerfed instead. Im cool with the vigor and boon duration nerf as long as we were compensated somehow. But seeing how of our traits and utilities remain….less than optimal for more than a year now is disheartening.

Guardian has 2 great builds sure, but that’s not excuse for pigeonholing this class into 2 viable specs for so long.

How hard is it to change spirit weapons back to their former “glory” and maybe give sword auto bleed, vulnerability or cripple…anything as cover condi for a condi guardian…I mean we do have 3 GRANDMASTER traits around condi yet I can guarantee you no dev came about to testing those specs in actual sPVP before releasing them.

Too many simpletons reading this thread and either take everything literally or have no reading comprehension.

The guardian is very balanced and we all agree with that. HOWEVER, most of the traits are terrible and useless.

Condi guardians and spirit weapons are a joke and are useless in any kind of COMPETITIVE play, be that fractals or even WvW.

People here tend to think that if they are able to solo their personal quests in orr with spirit weapons, or even condi guardians, those skills are fine, which is far from the truth.

Unfortunately this is a game which is extremely easy to pick up and reach a certain power plateau, and because someone clears their personal storyline, they feel they are now experts in GW2 and are able to give perspectives on gamebalance. This is why this game will never be balanced and forums will be plagued with ….newbies who think they know best. Another example I have seen here is people running garbage builds in a zerg, wiping the other zerg out and thinking its due to them. Zerg WvW is an extremely bad example to judge the usefulness of a build because in 99% of the cases, Numbers > optimized builds.

Fact is, that guardian has been pigeonholed into 2 specific traitlines for ages now, and has not seen a breath of fresh air for a while. The only positive change ever made was the buff to meditations which happened over 6 months ago.

The guardian class needs variety, I can hop on to a warrior and play in so many different ways its not even funny. With the guardian its either AH, or 20/25/0/0/25 if i want to stay competitive What I mean is that sure, i can do some silly condi based spirit weapon nonsense, but its such a joke, that I would never bring such a build in a 50 fractal or sPVP.

This patch brought absolutely nothing to the table

Black Box.9312:

Rym.1469:

I’m all after giving more variety to guardians, but with a cost of superior support ability. Currently, even if group or zerg would need some support, healing or tank with tons of utility like reflections, why would they something else than a guardia
?Bt Guardians surely needs some love when it comes to variety

I think that having the option to sacrifice some of that support viability to have more build freedom is exactly what the class needs.

exactly!
We guardians aren’t asking for buffs, we are asking for more options.

Aza.2105:

Hunter.4783:

This patch brought NOTHING to guardians but a heavy nerf (vigor).

All the GM traits are trash…even worse so.

A passive GRANDMASTER trait that gives 3k health in the hopes to fix the huge HP disparity with warriors? Boring and will never get picked over Pure of Voice.

Communal defenses sounded cool until we found out it didn’t give back aegis to the guardian AND had a 20 sec internal cooldown.

Virtues trait tries to balance the nerf to Vigor but fails because traits X and IX will ALWAYS be better. if I even went 30 points in virtues I would sure as hell pick IX and X, never this new trait.

And now, the best for last…the zeal and radiance traits…

What can I say, I thought they were a joke at the start, but lo and behold, they were not. Funny thing is that we already have another grandmaster trait in zeal which also buffs burn damage, so I wonder, why have 2 traits only the same trait line which pretty much do the same thing? Are the devs braindead when it comes to guardians? Do none of the QA ever play guardians? Was this trait a mistake?

Radiant retaliation….equally as bad as the zeal trait… Anet hopes to push guardians towards a condi heavy build while giving the class no means to apply any other cover condies nor have a reliable ranged way to spam conditions ala necro, thief, warrior, etc.
Again, this trait is an absolute joke.

Why is the community ignored when it comes to this class? Guardian is now the most boring and 1 dimentional class in the game and everyday guardian veterans and switching over to warriors.

Why are our spirit weapons STILL broken to this day? Why are half our signets worthless?

While some of what you say has truth to it, most of what you are saying is mere bickering. On patch day I came to a startling conclusion: Its not the guardian class that has become stagnate, its the people who play them that have.

Most guardian players are hog tied to certain ideas of what they feel guardian is and what it can do in most game play modes. The result is that innovation is choked since the vast majority of the guardian community does not take the time to sit down to try to experiment and draw their own conclusions. Instead, they need to wait for someone to lead them into trying different builds. When it takes one individual to make videos and threads of possible builds to even get most of the community to try something new, you know there is a problem.

With this patch, most guardian players shot down the new traits before even giving them a try. Why? Because in reality they do not want new things, they are fine with what they have. They only want things that confirm what they personally feel the class is. So if something new is presented and it does not fit their ideal of what guardian should have, they will reject it.

The class feels rigid and non innovative because most of the players are. This will continue as long as guardian players remain fixated on what they deem “viable builds”.

have you TRIED the new traits? Have you compared them to the previous ones we had? There is no contest between the old and the new. The new GM traits they added are completely worthless.
On top of that we have the already broken current mechanics, like spirit weapons and condie.

SO now dear sir, tell me how the guardians can enjoy more variety when half of our skills and traits are worthless? You can try spirit weapons for 5 min before you realize how subpar they are to everything else.

xFireize.6318:

would like to use Spirit Weapons viable against zerg.

So would everyone, chump, but guess what, they are trash, so are condi builds, which you also don’t run.

xFireize.6318:

Sauncho.8076:

xFireize, every build you mention is a support build. No one is complaining about guardian’s support. Yes, we are buff bots, in WvW and Spvp. But that’s about it. Everyone knows guardians excel with others, but what about 1 v 1, i.e. med dps. Like you said, you have to play near perfectly in order to compete in a med spec. I wouldn’t mind if the other professions were like this too, but they are not. And we are at a major disadvantage.

Yes my build is condition removal support — I really hate conditions. I’m not a fan of DPS guardian (I never said I was) and really would like to use Spirit Weapons viable against zerg. I use the foefire weapons. They look cool combined with SWs! I use SWs occasionally for 1vs1 .

Like I mentioned above, I was just commenting Hunter on how he exaggerated the nerf to vigor and boon duration.

Hunter was complaining about build viability in general which in partial was due to the many nerfs.

You countered it by mentioning you use AH and a variation of healway which is 30 honor 30 virtue, so nothing ground breaking here.

Again, why are you still posting? All you are doing is reinforcing the idea the guardian is a buff/utility bot with no other viable specs.

So you are running AH and Healway which might as wall be called Nerfed Way now.

I don’t see condi or spirit weapons in there anyways, I don’t see 30 in zeal either. Where is this huge innovation you are talking about

Stop derailing the thread

xFireize.6318:

Hunter.4783:

dancingmonkey.4902:

Why do some of you attack anyone does doesn’t complain about the things you have a problem with?

Maybe the reason they feel stagnate is because your a band wagoner who doesn’t have the originality to build something beyond the meta? Maybe not, I dunno. One thing I do not understand, is how someone can claim a profession only has two builds, just because those are the two popular “meta” builds. Think out side the box, and perhaps it will not feel stagnate.

Heal way 0/0/10/30/30 (for the ignorant flooding this post) was our third build which was nerfed both due to vigor uptime nerf and boon duration nerf. This build, is now completely and utterly destroyed.

I’m rocking 0/2/0/6/6 300 Healing Power guardian in WvW. Same setup from before except additional sigils after the patch. I don’t feel I got nerfed. Sure Vigor up time got cut, but so did overall attack from enemies.

300….that’s it?…. Honor itself gives you 300 healing power which im sure you don’t know. You are rolling together in wvw with a zerg in which case build and gear don’t really matter. You can roll naked in a zerg and still think you are “balanced” or in a good spot. Is this your way to tell me guardians are fine. Please stop posting before you embarrass yourself further.

Saddly enough your kind is what has been holding the guardian back for such a long time. You get a build off the internet, revolving AH, using empower in the middle of the zerg, getting back half your life and thinking oh kitten that’s cool. You have most likely never made it past lvl 30 fractal on your guardian yet here you are telling me the class is fine.

This is ridiculous.

dancingmonkey.4902:

Why do some of you attack anyone does doesn’t complain about the things you have a problem with?

Maybe the reason they feel stagnate is because your a band wagoner who doesn’t have the originality to build something beyond the meta? Maybe not, I dunno. One thing I do not understand, is how someone can claim a profession only has two builds, just because those are the two popular “meta” builds. Think out side the box, and perhaps it will not feel stagnate.

Meta builds are considered meta for a reason, they work. So you can run a spirit weapon build in a dungeon and feel “unique” or cool for 5 min before getting kicked or realizing how pathetically broken and worthless it is and changing back to a real build.

Heal way 0/0/10/30/30 (for the ignorant flooding this post) was our third build which was nerfed both due to vigor uptime nerf and boon duration nerf. This build, is now completely and utterly destroyed.

So yes, dear monkey, I am going to whine and complain when my one and only class I play (2200h on my guardian fyi) is getting butchered patch after patch, traitlines and specs getting destroyed one by one while other classes are getting new and useful traits as well as fixes to current ones. So stop for a sec and think why the entire guardian community is up in arms about this. And no, simply having an 80 guardian parked in Divinity Reach which you log into once in a blue moon dues not really qualify you to give balance suggestions, stick to topics concerning you main please.