Guild Wars 2

Mortifer.2946:

From my experience, if you have above 70% crit chance with fury on, it is enough. However, there will be people claiming that it is not enough. Those people think there is any difference between 98% crit chance and 100% crit chance.

I got in an argument years ago over this and I was dead wrong.

Crit chance increases damage linearly and will always be beneficial over the long run (check table https://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Critical_hit ). My math might be off, but with Maurader’s Amulet, Accuracy sigil should give 6% more damage (in the long run) regardless of your previous crit chance, assuming you don’t cap at 100%.

The thing to understand, is that DH is a trait line, not an entire build. DH traitline is incredibly strong comparatively to other guardian lines, because it massively improves your Virtues (affecting every build permeation) and it has a great balance between CC, survivability, and damage (offering a lot of flexibility in a single line). A similarly designed line is Virtues, which almost all guardian builds had previously.

In general, with the exception of condi builds you should almost always have DH as one of your traitlines, even if you are not using any of the traps or the bow.

1. why is this 4 sec cd long bow skill hitting harder than whirling wrath?
It doesn’t, Whirling Wrath does more damage as well as gains additional boosts due to it hitting multiple times (for example higher justice procs, and more vulnerability when coupled with Big Game Hunter).

2. How is it fair that virtue of courage on guard has the same cd as vitrue of courage on DH when DH ’s version is like 10 billion times stronger?
Cooldowns on core guardian were terribly long to begin with and the Devs never took the time to rebalance them as the game progress. DH was designed fresh with a better understanding of how the game works and therefore has better balance between cooldowns and effects.

Kodama.6453:

About your correction: Longbow 4 of Dragonhunters says it releases “a slow,arcing arrow which explodes on impact giving a symbol” -> Projectile + no “unblockable” note on it so this would mean it is reflectable. Can someone confirm this?

Longbow 4 is a ground targeted AOE so it shouldn’t be reflected.

Clarification on Mighty Blow: Hammer is by no means a damage oriented weapon that has antiquated cooldowns and painstakingly slow cast times (the likes of which don’t exist in the rest of the game). Mighty Blow is a good skill, but don’t compare it to True Shot. Mighty Blow is an AOE blast finisher, True Shot is a piercing (largely single target) projectile finisher.

I personally think True Shot is in a good place (could use a 1s increase in cooldown). It does impressive damage if you are a glass cannon, but you will get wrecked in exchange. Considering how many other classes have at least a 5-10s window where they can easily survive burst while outputting their own, a glass build doesn’t seem too reasonable.

The more balanced DH builds will have very little +damage modifiers and so TS will crit for 5k if you are lucky and with the amount of protection in this game, average a 3k crit. In my play testing, without TS a guardian (using a bow) doesn’t have the damage needed to burst down tankier targets. Even with True Shot a guardian not using traps has a fairly hard time finishing off a strong opponent in a quick enough time not to allow for a +1 to arrive.

Obal’s build:
http://gw2skills.net/editor/?vVAQNAS5fn8cCVdiFCBekittendil4BTe/1/WgY9g/zWoKAslqXA-TBSBABAcxCoU9nHeiCXt/o8gMlYmpEEPNMFqb4bABwQgggQIEWr1ataIUD1gUA6JsC-e

Just replace mace+torch with a bow and change Invigorated Bulwark.

It’s pretty amazing to think how much of a better spot Guardians would be in if they focused on any other field instead of light (even dark fields).

Darknicrofia.2604:

Aggrostemma.1703:

Glacial Heart trait: -20% CD reduction, your critical hits chill enemies, your Symbol of Protection is a Fire Field….

why would a trait called Glacial Heart ever drop fire fields? Ice fields would be more thematic and also more useful

Why does a guardian even have a trait that is called Glacial Heart and is the only chill on the entire class.

If you compare it to Selfless Daring (with Cleric’s Amulet), Pure of Heart is only 100 less healing. With less healing power Pure of Heart is going to be better. And with F3, shield 4, and Retreat easier to apply to party members.

A .5 healing coefficent is really high comparatively, especially for a skill that doesn’t seem to have an internal cooldown.

Luthic.7290:

Timston.1976:

This STUNBREAK when traited can be interrupted. So if I’m getting chain cced and I want to pop f3 but since they are chain ccing you your sunbreak gets interrupted and you go bye bye.

I personally dont use a traited version of the f3. So that cant be it. I just thought interrupt mechanics only worked on things with cast times. So because this has no cast time it was my belief that it should not be able to be interrupted. Its also odd to even hear that a stun break can be interrupted.

You would just think that they would either give it a 0.25s cast time to be more transparent about the situation or actually make it go off instantly and prevent a “instant cast” skill from being interrupted. Esp a full cd :/

I heard someone else make a compelling argument along the same line of thinking. It’s current cast time is so quick that no one can react and actively counter the ability fast enough, so why let it be interrupted since the interruption is completely luck based.

Just wondering why he had it on his hammer. Thought I was missing something.

Is sigil of energy still good after the change?

Darknicrofia.2604:

your self heal doesn’t get buffed, it only affects how much you heal your allies by I believe.

I’ll test it tonight when I get home and figure if the 1% is good enough.

Darknicrofia.2604:

that healing can be bumped to 10% per 100 vita and it still wouldn’t outdo a druid’s healing

Clarification on “Outgoing healing increased 1% per 100 Vitality”; does that percentage effect the total healing (example: a heal for 1,000 with +10% becomes 1,100) or just boost your healing power (example: healing power 1,000 with 10% becomes 1,100 healing power).

If it modifies final healing then 10% per 100 vitality would be insane. With just Carrion Amulet it would give +120-220% healing output (unsure if Force of Will factors in base Vitality). So with zero healing power Wings of Resolve would heal for 8-12k.

What am I missing?

The cooldown reduction doesn’t really change the weapon much in PVP and a 3s AOE chill on a 15s internal cooldown with a 50% on crit chance seems underwhelming.

How is Force of Will ludicrously weak for a grandmaster trait? 3k health and +1% healing per 100 vitality is incredibly strong.

If hammer and Glacial Heart are kept exactly as they are now, then the trait has no real impact on PVE and IMO should be treated as a PVP trait. As a PVP trait it makes sense in Valor or Virtues since they are the most often use trait lines for PVP, but that being said, I still wouldn’t being using Glacial Heart 90% of the time no matter where it was placed.

Arcaedus.7290:

It’s probably because we already have adequate, unblockable CC (Heavy Light, and our f1 pull) as is, and having all of the traps apply unblockable daze gave us too much unblockable CC in the eyes of ANET.

Heavy Light is unblockable? If it is, it should be a bug since nowhere in the tooltip does it say it should be.

People have been complaining since day 1 of DH virtues being clunky due to having cast times, but the new virtues are on average so much more powerful than previous versions that I think it is a worthwhile trade off. The only change in terms of RF is that you can’t activate the virtues while channeling RF, but it wouldn’t make sense to do it with the new virtues anyways.

We have a Signet of Mercy?

Obtena.7952:

We have seen Anet make these conservative balance changes for 3 years now … why would anyone think this would be any different? It’s not about making apologies, it’s about being realistic.

I wasn’t expecting ground breaking redesigns, but for the first major balancing patch post HOT I expected some much better thought in adjusting the shortcomings and strengths of classes in general.

Vikkela.7261:

Indure.5410:

Honest question, what do you use Sanctuary for?

Stomp-preventions/interruptions and closing of narrow points mostly, combined with available Wards, sometimes it functions as a ranged interruption of opponents healing.
Speaking of WvW only

Thanks for the reply.

@Obtena: I asked if you changed your builds due to the buffs, not if some of the buffs coincide with builds you already use.

For example I often use Smite, CoP, Protective Reviver, and Bane Signet which got buffs and are helpful. None of the changes effectively changed my play-style or had me rethink my builds though. Guardian is the same as it was pre-patch the only difference is that some of the numbers were tweaked a little.

Obtena.7952:

Don’t confuse ‘dull’ with ‘ineffective’. No, the changes aren’t sexy but most are buffs and are to some skills that were underused. Not sure what you call that but I call it balancing.

Has any of the changes to traits or utilities enticed you to change your build or replace the current utilities you use on a regular basis?

Vikkela.7261:

Darknicrofia.2604:

still won’t be used in any meta build.

Fix’d for you

Honest question, what do you use Sanctuary for?

Not a lot of people know this, but my biggest dream was to incorporate Wrathful Spirit into my build, but with just 3s of retaliation it was so underwhelming; well in your face people, with 4s it is borderline overpowered. I laugh at anyone who would want to pick up a flat 7% damage increase in a damage oriented line over this beautiful new trait.

Sorry … trying … to keep … in my … snarkyness.

Honestly, it pains me to think that a Dev spent time and energy carefully designing this trait to be more “helpful” without being too overpowered. We should give it another year of testing and maybe we can give it an even 5s.

Asmodal.6489:

I do think that the mace mastry change will have quite an impact. It will at least on my build. a pretty much constant 250+ healing power with the new sage amulet is going to be pretty sweet. dialing it up to 500 is still only possible with DH F3 and RF but getting cleric heal values on dodges an aegis pops on an more offensive setup will be nice.

I’m actually really excited to see what you can do with this.

Granted guardians didn’t get nerfed in any areas except for traps and received minor buffs across the board, but dear god why did Anet even mention “In keeping with the general theme of improving less used options, we’ve been updating both traits and abilities to be more useful and to have a meaningful impact when you equip them.” None of these changes, have any practical changes worth noting. If you weren’t using these traits/utilities you still aren’t going to, while utilities like Smite and CoP are even harder to justify removing from our bar.

This has been mentioned before. Auto attacks with bows (including ranger and warrior) have an actual projectile that travels on an arc that can travel further than 1200 before they ht the ground. True Shot fires in a straight line and disappears exactly at 1200.

bye
/char ………

Can you please critique my response base off its merits, rather than just personally attacking. I still don’t understand why you think necro outperforms hammer in worst gear; when you can look at a simple DPS AA rotation and see that it doesn’t. I’m not even using my own data to slant the topic, it’s your numbers.

And your kitten right I post heavily on the guardian forum; I’ve been playing a guardian as my main for years and deeply care about the issues effecting it.

I’m trying to keep this polite, but you don’t have enough knowledge about Guardians to know what you are talking about. The highest damage output for hammer is just AA chains. The usage of skills# 2-5 are a DPS loss and are not used in a damage rotation. Also my post is in reference to DPS (damage per second), not damage per hit which I think you are putting too much of an emphasize on.

Necros AA chain (numbers are based off your screen shot):
Dusk Strike (~1,300) > Fading Strike (~1,500) > Chilling Scythe (~1,800) = ~4,600/2.5s

Hammer’s initial AA chain:
Hammer swing (~1,300) > Hammer Bash (~1,500) > Symbol of Protection AA (~1600) + Symbol proc (~850) = ~5,250/2.5s

After the first chain of hammer creating the initial symbol, all further AA chains:
Hammer swing (~1,300) > Symbol proc (~850) > Hammer Bash (~1,500) > Symbol proc (~850) > Symbol of Protection AA (~1600) + Symbol proc (~850) = ~7,000/2.5s

So during the first AA chain, hammer slightly outperforms necros’ GS, but once the second AA chain starts then Hammer gets a significant boost to outperform GS by ~60% DPS (under these specific circumstances and when only looking at AA chains). I understand the necro is at a stat+damage modifier disadvantage, but the results show the 60% disparity you would expect.

Also keep in mind I’m not saying the damage for Hammer is higher than the necros’ GS when factoring in all skills. In fact I’m sure it is much lower (since the hammer is not considered a high damage weapon for Guardian).

Edit: Based off your screen shot, the 60% disparity is only coming from power and the +30% damage modifiers for the Guardian. You also have 25% more crit and 30% more ferocity with the trinkets which would increase the disparity even further if crits were added to the experiment.

I personally think that Symbol of Swiftness should be a water field (I know it will never happen) and that Orb of Light (detonate) should be a blast finisher (don’t know why this hasn’t happened). Also change cooldown on Detonate from 4x to 2×.

I would almost like Symbol of Swiftness to revert back to its original state so that I could get 8s (flat) out of it, rather than the 4s (stacking) I get now.

Your original post was GS vs GS. You compared guardian’s hammer to necro’s GS. Hammer is low tier damage and has a forum thread with +150 responses complaining about its short comings.

Unfortunately for your argument, one of the hammer’s strengths is its AA chain (I believe its second best in the game currently). The symbol (especially when fully traited) does lots of damage at the SAME TIME as your auto attacks. In the same period of time that a necro GS can complete a 3 hit auto chain, the guardian’s hammer (starting on second AA chain) hits 3 times as well, plus has ~3 symbol procs. So in a period of time when you do ~4,500 damage the hammer will do ~6200 (numbers are from your screen shot).

Edit: Actually, the AA chain for hammer is ~7.1k according to your screenshot. Roughly a 60% damage increase.

^Agreed, more of a problem with me liking to add adjectives to words for the sake of wanting more adjectives.

For spirit weapons:

Replace their health bar with a break bar so they can’t be CC, don’t die in PVE and need to be focused in PVP to be destroyed.

Cooldowns need to be rethought. I personally would like to see them be like traps where the cooldown starts after summoning them, but would be reset if you use the command skill for them.

Their trait Expeditious Spirit needs to be rethought since burning on hit only helps half of the spirit weapons.

For the weapons themselves, the hammer and shield aren’t too bad. The hammer just needs to knock down instead of back, and the shield needs to stay next to me not shield an area I was in 5s ago. For the sword, I would like to see it become a staple in condi DPS builds. Increase attack speed, lower base damage to allow higher Expeditious Spirit procs meaning more burn stacks. Spirit bow is awful and can be change to anything else at this point.

For Signets:
In my mind Signets are exactly like Virtues and should be treated the same way. Strong personal passive buff and once activated that buff goes to all party members for a limited amount of time.

For example
Bane Signet: (passive) +10% damage; (active) +10% damage to 5 allies for 5s; 30-40s cooldown.

Signet of Judgement: (passive) -10% incoming damage; (active) Frost Armor to 5 allies (7s of -10% damage and chill on hit); 30-40s cooldown.

The trait Perfect Inscriptions changed to 20% cooldown reduction and personal passive buff remains active during the activated buff. So for example Bane Signet would give 10% personal damage, and when activated give +20% damage for 5s then lose the passive completely until the cooldown was reached.

Timston.1976:

Do you guiz think bunk guard will be back aswell?

Judging from the current PVP amulets being removed from the game they are going to slowly phase-out all bunker builds from sPVP.

Concept behind the Guardian: “Guardians are devoted fighters who protect their allies and smite their enemies by drawing from the power of their virtues. True guardians are brilliant tacticians and selfless defenders who know when to sacrifice their own SPOT IN THE PARTY to empower their allies to achieve victory.”

All kidding aside what the hell is our class’ concept? And why does it absurdly restrict our damage, mobility, healing output, offensive boons, condition options, personal survivability, and defensive utilities?

^Balancing around a concept is the bane that has limited Guardians since release because it is entirely subjective. Things aren’t designed to work in any practical way they are design to appease a concept that was create years ago and follow to this day in an uninspired dogmatic way.

^ Even then, according to gw2skills, in identical berserker armor + scholar runes (no traits or other modifiers) the Guardian’s GS is 840/840/1250 vs Necro’s 1000/1250/1450 auto attacks. In order to get the OP’s numbers you need to be factoring in all the damage modifiers for a Necro while completely ignoring modifiers for the Guardian.

2890 vs 1070 is an error in your math or else you aren’t accurately testing under the same circumstances.

Questions:
So when you are not using them as a weapon they will still suck?

Do they have a time limit to how long you can wield them? I would find it silly for them to just be kits, and have the issue of replacing my greatsword with a greatsword kit.

Askadia.4395:

Imo, Spirit weapons should work like a mix of Nerco minions, Ele conjurers and Engi toolkits. So, you can use them as minions (Necro), or grab them to replace your #1-5 skills (Ele/Engi). I mean, there’s already tons of GS, hammer, LB and shield skills in the game, devs don’t have to create new ones, just give as AT LEAST a slightly weaker version of them.

We have access to all those weapons anyways. They are going to be either worse than there physical counterparts that we already have or they will be better and then I’ll wonder why Guardian’s hammer isn’t just the Spirit version.

I do find it funny that if you look closely at the counter balancing for many of the Guardian’s skills (like cooldown, cast time, area of effect, etc) the developers truly thought that these abilities (Signet of Mercy, Sanctuary, etc) were going to be overpowered

Nike.2631:

I have to laugh. Revenant is so in the nerf-cannon crosshairs right now it’s not even funny. I take it back, it’s hilarious. Lets see where we stand at the end of the month.

In all honesty that class doesn’t belong in GW2 (permanent boons … really), I’m interested in seeing where they take it.

@Ragnar: LOL option 2 sounds like an alternative version to signets, and option 2b is Bane signet.

@sasoriaka: Who cares about PVE? I sure do, since I’ve spent 100s of hours leveling and gearing my character. The real question is who cares about sPVP, when I can create a character and start playing with zero investment. Not to mention I really don’t want the entirety of the game to be balanced around a single game type that revolves around whether or not a class is good at point capture.

Oh where to begin.

Overall change: Spirit weapons’ health bar should be replaced with a break bar similar to how a chalk sapper is designed. That way they aren’t going to get killed prematurely in PVE and opponents have to waste valuable CC to get rid of them in PVP and it would become immune to CC. For PVE their aggro would have to be almost completely eliminated since it can’t tank for you.

Their cooldowns also need to be rethought. Possibly a variation of how traps are handled. Cooldown starts immediately after use, but then will reset if you use a command skill.

Expeditious Spirit: Since half of spirit weapons don’t attack enemies it needs an extra component added, or Bow of Truth and Shield of the Avenger need to be changed to gain benefit from the burning. For example Bow of Truth’s command burns enemies if hit with the healing arrows, and Shield of the Avenger causing burning if it successfully absorbs a projectile.

Spirit Sword: The command skill needs to be fix so that it can hit reliably. I’d prefer if sword becomes a condi damage utility since that is the only build that uses it now. The damage per hit would scale down dramatically, but the attack speed would increase to give higher Expeditious Spirit procs. It’s movement speed would need to be tweaked so that it could reliably stay on target.

Spirit Hammer: Needs to knock down, not back in the auto attack chain. Wish it did something valuable during the ~6s dead period between chains. Maybe pulse cripple or protection.

Spirit Shield: NEEDS to stay on my kitten , not dance around and leisurely follow me. If it did a good job of creating a dome where I actually was then this would be a solid utility. Could use a better buff from Expeditious Spirit.

Spirit Bow: Too many problems with it to offer constructive feedback.

Any ability (with the exception of Renewed Focus) that has a cooldown of 60s or more is not anywhere near good enough to justify that cooldown. In fact, if you create a chart ranging from the best designed / most useful utilities > the worst designed / least useful utilities, even if cooldowns weren’t factored in, the worst utilities are the ones with the higher cooldowns. Go figure.

Obtena.7952:

I would prefer if there was a ‘smart’ way to apply Aegis but i don’t think stacking it is the answer; it’s way too easily abused that way.

Personally, I would like to see changed to absorb a certain amount of damage instead of a single hit. That way it’s not so easily wiped away by clever players.

There’s plenty of counter-measures they could add to eliminate abuse. For example a stack limit of 3-5 and/or a time limit so that after the first application each additional stack can only last ~10s. That being said, I don’t think adding stacks is a good answer to aegis since it just compounds the absurdly varying amounts of damage reduction aegis can give. Obtena’s approach is better IMO because it starts making aegis damage mitigation more reliable.

I can only tell you my opinion and as you can tell the forum is pretty divided on the issue.

Guardians are still very viable in WvW and the new Dragonhunter specialization gave us a huge boost to range capabilities and area control.

For sPVP, in many ways guardians have stayed the same even if you pick up Dragonhunter (medi builds still being the mainstay). Guardians seem to have strong burst damage, but with the powercreep are too frail to survive in the current meta, bunker guardian included. But this pertains to pro sPVP and if you are just solo-queuing you most likely will do great.

For PVE, guardians do the same as they have always done. They provide arguably helpful support and mid-tier damage. They thrive in content that needs aegis, condition removal, projectile blocking, and stability. The only weakness they currently have are raids where their four strengths aren’t really needed and there lower damage is seen as a liability. My belief is that you should bring good players to raids not good classes; but if are going to pug, expect some troubling getting into raids (not because guardians are terrible, but because they are entirely replaceable).

In direct regards to your post: “If it’s just a matter of putting more effort into the class I don’t particularly see an issue.” Guardians have one of the lowest skill-ceilings in my opinion so I think you might experience the opposite effect and get potentially frustrated when you can’t squeeze more performance out of the class.

Nike.2631:

Ok, there’s a fundamental error in the reasoning in this post: If they felt Dragonhunters were balanced, they wouldn’t be nerfing them. So the notion that you’re gonna get something to offset what you’re losing is NOT a given. They want them to be weaker not just as powerful but different.

I completely agree its not a given. But, take for example the explanation of elementalists: “This profession has seen a lot of defensive additions through recent updates and the addition of the tempest. In this iteration, we’ll be fine-tuning the defensive nature of the elementalist a little more and improving its offensive side a bit.” This is a better example of fixing the unbalanced aspects of a class, while giving them better competitiveness in other areas.

Also it looks like overall they aren’t weakening elite specializations (definitely not true for all classes) but rather increasing the viability of core classes to match the new power level.

Like others have said LB#2 could get a slight cooldown increase. Would like to see a 20% cooldown modifier trait for bow if that happens though.