Guild Wars 2

Starbreaker.6507:

I’m curious since Rangers and Thieves have traps too.

Did people whine this much about those too, or are DH ones just that terrifying that people forget how to use skills and the dodge button when they get near one?

My understanding is that thief’s traps are terrible in general and Ranger’s traps are okay but they specialize in condition damage so therefore easier to mitigate mistakes. Although only one-trick pony guardians are going to use 5 traps, if someone does make a mistake and hit them the fight is over with little recourse.

I mainly blame Anet for the issues being talked about in this post. We know they are going to be buffing core guardian’s traits and abilities (which is great), but in terms of the Dragonhunter, they were clear they were going to nerf the burst damage and disruption capabilities of the specialization without providing any path forward to how the nerf in one area is going to lead to buffs in other areas to make the class “balanced.” Right now a lot of people are under the believe that they are going to take an under-performing class that has one strength and make it an under-performing class with no strengths.

Rodzynald.5897:

The balance update will arrive shortly and it is said that traps will get a nerf (Don’t mind it and im kind of glad). But they also said that guardian will have traits and abilities both updated. Do you think they might also touch some of our weapons ?
Though they mentioned weapons in other classes, I really hope that hammer might get a tweak as well as it is clearly a weapon that is used rarely in both pvp and pve

Although I still hold out hope, I personally think Hammer needs a heavy redesign and since it wasn’t specifically mentioned in the update (like many other classes), it still might get some numbers tweaked, but I doubt it will get the attention it needs.

My knowledge of raids are limited, but from what I understand there is very little to no conditions and you are not going to be dealing with CC. This makes Retaliatory Subconscious, Hunter’s Determination worthless. You have no traps in your build so Piercing Light is worthless. You also don’t gain much benefit from Indomitable Courage or Pure of Voice (except cooldown reduction). You don’t have the critical strike chance to justify Empowering Might.

You going to get a lot responses that tanks should still be DPS with just enough toughness and utilities to keep aggro and stay alive. I agree with this sentiment, but if you are going to carry on in minstrels its your call.

I would recommend trying out hammer for constant protection for melee group (need Writ of Persistence).

With your set-up, I wonder if staff would also work well. With Honorable Staff + 27% boon duration (minstrels) + Herald you could achieve ~100% boon duration and have the range you were talking about.

Helpful utilities to try out are Bane signet to give you a damage increase and its active is very effective against breakbars; and Merciful Intervention to instantly get back into position if you get teleported.

Superior runes of Speed + Honor trait line will give you practically 100% uptime of swiftness with just Retreat. Pure of Voice + Honorable staff + runes will give your Retreat a 32s cooldown and a 30s uptime of swiftness (as long as you have staff out while traveling). Centaur runes which are even cheaper will give you the same duration, more power, and the ability to use your heal to get swiftness (10s) during retreat’s cooldown. Mix in staff’s Symbol and your good to go.

You’ll take a hit on your damage, but 33% movement speed is better than 25%.

I personally use sigil of Swiftness because it is super cheap and I kill enough mobs during hearts that I have 40-120s of swiftness built up before moving to a new location.

NumenorLord.6539:

If you’re asking for PVP, Marauder amulet should give you some survivability against current meta builds.

For PVE understand this:

Vitality: Gives you survivability against Condition Damage
Toughness: Gives you survivability against Direct Damage

How many mobs apply heavy Conditions on you? That’s right, not many of them, not even in Raids, Dungeons or FotM. If you invest in Vitality gear (Marauder, Sentinnel or Valkyrie) for PVE you’re wasting your money and you’re gonna swap sooner or later. If you really really have problems surviving invest in Knight (Toughness/Power/Precision) gear mixed with Zerker. Knight is kinda training wheels for Zerker wich is the gear you should aim to because PVE (even new maps) are fairly easy and ATM we have an optimal DPS ranged option (LB).

Why do I see this so often?

Toughness gives damage reduction on direct damage, vitality gives you more health which is helpful for both condition damage and direct damage. The only benefit that toughness gives over vitality is that it keeps your health pool small, allowing your healing to be more effective.

In terms of gear I wouldn’t recommend training wheel armor at all because it cost you money you could be using for other things, but Marauders is just as viable as Knights since both give you enough effective health to take a big hit or make a big mistake, while Maurders provides a substantial damage increase over Knights.

Aeolus.3615:

i have a feeling that Anet would delete the thief from game if they could >_>

Fixed your typo.

Only damage oriented build I can see the shield fitting into is Obal’s condi build. You would have to switch the torch out for a shield which would hurt your damage quite a bit, but it would work fairly well otherwise. The only sad part is you really can’t fit the Valor line into a good damage build since you need Radiance, Zeal, + Honor (if mace) or Virtues (if sword/scepter).

https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/professions/guardian/Guide-DPS-Guardian-for-PVE/first

^ Yes usually picking the strongest most OP class is the best way to advance.

Hunter.4783:

It’s 1 thing to be underpowered in 1 department, and another to be trash tier in every competitive mode.

Every competitive mode? Guardians are fine if not one of the better WvW classes. PvP is such a joke right now in terms of balance that your definition of “trash tier” currently involves 2/3 of the classes. And although raids/fractals/dungeons aren’t technically “competitive” if we are talking about them: dungeons are irrelevant now and if you can fill a party your lucky; guardians still have a good spot in fractals; and raids are a bad fit for the Guardian.

They said there would be a huge balance patch after their PVP season is over. They most likely won’t be rebuilding classes, but expect some major number tweaking across the board.

cranos.5913:

Guardian is in a pretty bad state atm. Other than in WvW melee trains (for stab) they’re not really meta anywhere. The damage is subpar and other classes just bring more to the table. Chrono has as many reflects, permanent quickness output and alacrity. Rev has ridiculously more DPS and the ease with which it buffs parties is undefeatable. Guardian on the other hand just has a very short quickness uptime, bad dps as said before and mostly useless defensive buffs.

Honestly I don’t think this is fixable until they bring out the next elite spec. DH was just a bad idea overall.

DH wasn’t a bad idea and the next elite (unless completely broken OP) is not going to fix Guardian, because core guardian is the problem.

Azoqu.8917:

I’ve played Guardian as a main since the head start 3 years ago up until the week raids came out. The Guardian brings nothing to the raid that other, better, classes can bring. Well except for one thing that is, terrible DPS that isn’t worth thinking about. Anyone who says they do decent damage has never played another class except maybe Mesmer. Earlier this year when I decided to map complete on my Elementalist I was shocked at how much damage I was doing compared to a Guard.

Can you post a credibly damage ranking, because I’ve scoured the internet trying to find one without any luck? All I’ve seen is anecdotal evidence like yours without any real testing.

Save Yourselves is an okay shout, but it definitely looks better on paper then it actually is. You benefit from protection, fury, and swiftness, and to a lesser extent vigor. Regen and retal aren’t too helpful and the 1 stack of might is comical. Also comes with the disadvantage of having a long 60s cooldown, boons that only effect the Guardian, and the possibility of drawing dangerous conditions from allies to yourself thus negating the benefits of the boons and possibly killing yourself.

Feel My Wrath on the other hand has a kitten cooldown, effects 5 allies and of course has quickness (which is one of only 4 abilities in the game that applies quickness to allies; mesmers having the other 3).

LOL, *forty five second cooldown, don’t know why it got censored.

Hunter.4783:

Dnt and KING can afford to have a Guardian in their roaster, 99.9% of other raids do not. A Guardian is a detriment to a raid team right now. I can tell you that by experience. Try pugging VG as a dragon hunter. You won’t find a group.

Agreed on the swamp meta. But anywhere else I would rather have any other class besides guard and thief

For your last point you are saying the same thing as me, just differently. If 4 professions are op chances are just as good the other 5 are underpowered

You have trouble pugging raids as a Dragon Hunter because of sentiments like yours, not because the class is underwhelming. There’s a huge difference between Guardians offering slightly lower damage and Guardians being a liability to bring.

As for sPVP, don’t confuse the meta as a definition of power. The current meta is solely about not dying, an unimportant ideal in the PVE Bereserker meta. Case in point the warrior, a great class in PVE and worthless in sPVP.

I think you must be doing it wrong. Great sword does provide higher damage especially in regards to burst damage, but the longbow is close behind and should be a far safer weapon to use, not sure why you would be taking more damage. Like Obtena said melee weapons are designed to be slightly stronger than range in general.

If you’re having trouble my suggestions would be:

Buy a cheap Superior Sigil of Speed which will give you high swiftness uptime and allow you to kite mobs easier.

Always have Test of Faith as one of your utilities. 24s cooldown, instant cast, daze+cripple and does a lot of damage if enemies run through the wall. Between your swiftness and the enemy being crippled you should never have problems while kiting.

True Shot should always be prioritize for damage.

Symbol of Energy is crazy strong and works well with Inner Fire, since it + Spear of Justice can proc 3 burn stacks instantly.

Wings of Resolve has a much shorter cooldown than the previous F2 virtue so don’t be afraid to use it much more often, even if it is only to re-position/escape.

If you are taking Big Game Hunter, please keep in mind that it procs vulnerability from almost every instance of damage the guardian does (not just strikes). Abilities like symbols/Whirling Wrath/Procession of Blades can easily stack very high vulnerability very fast. Example: while tethered and taking around 5s to accomplish: Procession of Blades + Symbol of Wrath + Whirling Wrath = 22 vulnerability (22% damage increase); alternatively, Procession of Blades + Symbol of Energy + Deflecting Shot + True Shot = 17 vulnerability (17% damage increase).

Ahhhhh man. I spent half and hour playing around with a build to maximize Healing power (at all cost), then ran it through the healing coefficients and now I’m very sad; there’s very little potential for the absurd amount of trait/attribute investment.

Radiance is usually the most helpful trait-line when leveling. Its two minor traits of “Justice is Blind” and “Renewed Justice” is what allows you to spam blind often. Often Guardians will have Staff as a off-hand for swiftness, but if you are having trouble vs groups consider hammer or main-hand+focus.

The best way to look at Zealot’s Aggression is that it is a 10% damage increase with a extra modifier (cripple on Justice proc) thrown in as a bonus. The cripple on Justice proc is only for 1.5s so its not up for long enough anyways and like others have said we can use traps and Puncture Shot on bow to more reliably keep up cripple.

I like the Signet of Mercy change, although what is the effect of “Symbol of Judgement”?
May I suggest its active be changed to be like Mesmer’s Signet of Inspiration active, where all your boons are copied. This would give you a group burst heal and more boons for party.

Signet of Judgment’s active to a knockdown would be nice compared to current retal + weakness. The 10% damage reduction is strong and you would need a strong active to make me ever want to break the passive effect.

I like Ragnar’s Signet of Wrath better, although since you didn’t account for Bane signet you could incorporate your version of wrath there. I would like to see at least one damage signet though, since Guardian’s have very little damage boosters in their utilities.

Signet of Courage either needs to shift to Ragnar’s description of smaller heal per sec, or (if it can be coded) become a threshold ability, where if a nearby ally gets reduce to under 50% health the signets passive activates for a large (~2-3k) heal and then goes on an internal cooldown. The active version is fine as a group heal, but it needs to be balanced so that it is functionally usable (no 4.25s cast time). If that means longer cooldown so be it.

^Excellent post.

VanEinstein.5019:

I appreciate the feedback. I don’t participate in raids, so that wasn’t a concern of mine, but I do occasionally have trouble in a fractal or two. One example I can think of concerns the opening fight in the cliffside fractal. For whatever reason if that fellow decides to focus me, there’s really little I can do to survive his onslaught long enough for cooldowns to come back up. Perhaps I’ll simply need to adjust which skills I’m bringing so that I can prolong my life there. Typically I only have shield of courage, shelter, and retreat as my life savers. I’ll just have to start being mindful that I may need one more or to change retreat for something w/ a longer uptime.

Haven’t ran fractals in a while, but I remember running Wall of Reflection and Shield of the avenger in that fractal to give yourself solid projectile defense. Might be worth trying.

NumenorLord.6539:

Toughness= Counter direct damage.
Vitality= Counter conditions applied to you.

As mobs rarely apply conditions it’s not necessary. On the other hand, a lot of players in PvP apply conditions so extra Vitality is always welcome (thereby, current Meta build in PvP uses Marauder amulet).

Vitality doesn’t counter conditions, condition removal does. Vitality expands your health pool and is equally effective against conditions and direct damage.

A thought, although not specifically about hammer, but coinciding with many of the ideas generated in this thread.

If Glacial Heart is moved out of the Virtues line, I would like its replacement to be:

Elemental Wrath:
On activation of a virtue, the next symbol cast will have its light-field switch to a different field corresponding to the Virtue used.

Activation:
Virtue of Justice: Next symbol used will be a fire field (within next 10s).
Virtue of Resolve: Next symbol used will be a water field (within next 10s).
Virtue of Courage: Next symbol used will be an ice field (within next 10s).

This would keep Guardians focus on light fields, but would let them strategically use other fields with fairly long cooldowns. Although its cool that with Radiance (a trait line focused on burning), Renewed Focus would give you permanent fire fields as long as you are constantly killing mobs.

Hammer is pretty rough in Heart of Thorns areas due to mobs hitting much harder, but my suggestion would still be the basic hammer build that has always existed:

http://gw2skills.net/editor/?vVAQNAS5dlsAhigYhQwRIQQEHxDVNAeg6F3DJxWYDhX4RB-TRBXABAo8zH1fCR3wr7P8gSQA-e

This build works okay in general PVE, dungeons, and transitions well into being a tank in raids.

For general world PVE, I would highly suggest using Hammer of Wisdom and Signet of Judgement as your utilities to let you face tank better and split aggro between you and your spirit weapon. Your secondary weapon is up to you, but mace+off hand is the usual go-to since mace shares so many traits with hammer. Runes of the Scrapper are optional but I think you might find them helpful for HoT mobs.

As for trait lines, in open world PVE the Honor line is optional (IMO) and can be traded out for whatever you wish. If you decide to tank in raids Honor is almost mandatory, but Radiance will most likely switch out to something else.

I would also add that with the new longbow Guardians now have a way of dealing significant damage from range which is almost always safer, alleviating the need for the extra HP.

PVE (specifically what in PVE), WvW, or PVP?

Sticky guides at the top cover almost everything you need to know. Although some of it is a little outdated.

Astra Lux.2846:

On paper this all sounds super OP, but in PvP the more traps you bring the weaker you are going to be and even with them all it’s basically going to come down to if your opponents aren’t paying attention or if you get a lucky break with your team.
/snip

The only reason the more traps you bring the weaker you become is because of the reason I pointed out in my previous post, that Meditations are too essential. Traps are strong utilities, but too much of a Guardian’s survivability hinges on Monk’s Focus.

I wonder if Piercing Light was changed to mimic Monk’s Focus, so that trap activation (or placement) heals for 2k, would people still think traps are a liability?

brandname.4736:

and then accommodate for running speed so either use two shouts with terrible cooldowns or throw out a weapon for staff.

Sigil of Speed works really well and only cost ~3 silver on AH.

I like the idea and it would be in the right trait line for a vitality increase, but I wonder if it would be useless as an aura type skill for other people since it would just boost their max HP, not give them health back. It would be fine if the Guardian was always next to the person, but if the Guardian is constantly going in an out of range the +vitality could get entirely wasted.

Soryuju.8164:

I do think it’s a little funny that no one so far, OP included, seems to have remembered that “Receive the Light!” exists. Shows how popular of a choice it is for healing, I guess.

Hehehe … to be fair its only been a shout for 6 months.

Kjeldoran.3849:

2)empower doest heal that much just because might is not applied 1 at times but 3 or 4 at time (i don’t use staff from long time sorry) and this means that the effective heal (self) is 72×3(or 4)xnumber of allies which in the best scenario is a 1440 heal + skill heal… Cool how much? 3k? 4k at max and then? You are stuck with a crappy weapon for 9 sec…

https://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Altruistic_Healing

Altruistic Healing procs on each individual application of Might so it is 12-60 procs depending on allies reached with a max heal of 4.2k, with an additional heal component on the end for an additional 1.5k. The additional healing on Empower also has a healing coefficient of 1.0 so with the right gear set-up and traits (I know no one builds this way) you could get it up to 3.4k. For a total of 5.7k -7.6k healing.

Shouts are in a good place in my opinion.

Retreat works well, although your changes sound fine.

Hold the Line is a terrific utility even though it feels so lackluster. In perfect circumstances it increases the effective health of a guardian to 20k.

Stand your ground is great.

Feel my Wrath is great.

Save yourselves … this doesn’t even belong as a shout, feels more like a Signet active.

Shield of judgment: damage (base) 320, applies protection (4s) and aegis (4s), 20s cd.

my tought now is: why protection + aegis??? aegis block 1 attack so it means that (in pve at least) the first hit (unless under massive attack, and in this case it is anyway useless) will took away 1 to 2 sec of protection aswell! so my idea is:

Shield of jugment: damage (base) 640, applies protection (4s) and dazes foe (1s)

I agree with you that the overlap of prot and aegis is odd, although still has its uses since a block against a hard hitting attack is much better than Prot, while prot becomes useful if under a flurry of attacks. Your change to a daze would weaken it against hard hitting mobs, keep it relatively the same in general PVE, and be possibly a bit strong in PVP. Since it is conal AOE, you need to change your text from daze foe(s).

@Obtena

I agree that comparison can be subjective and I am usually against comparison on a skill by skill level like comparing Warrior’s shout A to Guardian’s shout B, but I still don’t understand why anyone would ignore pertinent data that would help make a class better and more balanced.

Asmodal.6489:

/snip
besides you compare a master with a grandmaster trait.

I don’t disagree with the rest of your post but …

I see this brought up from time to time on different things and I personally think this is an antiquated way of thinking based on the old trait system. The old trait system allowed you to invest partial points into a tree to cherry pick what you were after, so it made since that grandmaster traits need to be stronger to force you to invest deeper in the line.

But the new system forces you to fully invest into 3 trait lines so as an 80 whether something is a grandmaster or a master trait doesn’t really matter, since I’m going to be force to pick up one of each anyways.

As for leveling pre-80, grandmaster make a difference since it is deeper down the line, but I personally don’t think that an MMO should be balanced around how effective individual classes can level.

Obtena.7952:

I think you’ve missed my point completely.

Make your case about the state of PVE Guardians without reference to other classes and maybe you have something compelling a dev would pay attention to. The state of a class ingame is not dependent on the state of any other. Revs do everything better? OK … how does that make my Guardian any less effective in it’s role conceived by the devs? I doesn’t.

If you are making the case for open world meta events where there is no limit to number of people participating then I think you partially have a point. If you are making the case for raids where slots are very limited than I couldn’t disagree more. I would argue that if a Guardian’s “conceived role” doesn’t create a demand for them in a raid environment, or their role is better fulfilled by others, then due to limited slots their “conceive role” can’t be considered effective.

In my opinion, effectiveness can only be defined as a comparison between two things, since it is not defined by if you can do something, but rather by how well you can do something comparably.

In general, I don’t think you can judge effectiveness in a conceive role without comparing it to other classes, since you would have no measurement to balanced effectiveness.

I’ve played a lot of MMO’s and have come to realize that heavy armor melee classes are almost always in a good spot because they are so easy to balance. Thus, I usually favor them and since I also need a little magic in my life I never choose warrior. Although I usually like being able to support others as well, it has always felt very underwhelming in GW2. I personally like the addition of the DH and from a support standpoint its nice to be on the backline and see how people are fairing, compared to me sitting inside the boss hitbox and using WW.

Drayos.8759:

and Ofcourse it’ll still be a Dragonhunter, but as it should have been and not what you guys are stuck with. traps should be more CC orinitated for Team play, where there Skillset needs More combinations in it, atm they just have Tons of Damage in 1 button, and the Prayer a idiot runs through their traps repeatively.
/snip

Do you even read the tooltips on traps?

All traps can be traited for daze, one of the stronger CC in the game.

Fragment of Faith: 6s of cripple, spreads aegis procs around the area and is a personal stun break and stability for the guardian.

Lights judgment: 10 stacks of vulnerability, reveals stealth, and provides guardian with swiftness.

Test of Faith: 6s cripple and provides guardian 6s protection.

Dragons Maw: Provides 6s ward, 4s slow, and gives the Guardian 10 stacks of Might.

They really don’t need more CC or utility.

My personal feeling on the issue (although I don’t sPVP often) is that too much of Guardians survival is based off taking Monk’s Focus (there is a reason why Medi guards are so prevalent), thus severely limiting you in what you can bring for utilities. If Monk’s Focus was removed from the game and its sustainability rolled into base guardian I think you would see a lot more opportunities for guardians.

This thread is far too long for me to provide accurate analysis, but I’ll give the best feedback I can. Having 4 maps to defend is far too much territory to cover. A single EB is enough.

I would make the suggestion that if you still want 4 maps (1 EB + 3 borderlands) they be oriented in a tiered system. With the first 2 borderlands being the only thing the offense can attack at first. Once they are conquered, the next borderland opens and needs to be taken, and then the EB is unlocked. Maps already have a population cap on them but it should be shifted to provide a bonus to the defenders. Tier 1 (lowest) 50/50, Tier 2 60/40 defenders advantage, Tier 3 (EB) 70/30 defenders advantage.

So as an example if the pop. cap was 100 people in Tier 3 (EB): the defenders would have 70 potential slots to the defenders 30 slots. This would always allow the defenders to have a population advantage, assuming they can fill all their slots.

I’m not sure what the benefit is of placing a restriction on the amount of Globes you can travel to each week. Taking an opponents territory doesn’t limit their ability to counter-attack my Globe, so their is little reason to target Globes that are currently attacking me. What is more likely to happen is strong Globes will avoid attacking each other because it isn’t cost-effective and instead focus all their energy in attacking the weakest Globes to exponentially increase their territory and points. What your system needs is a system where losing key points in your home Globe actually effects your ability to conquer other Globes. This would give some (although little) incentive for stronger Globes to attack each other if to only limit their enemy’s rate of expansion.

Have you played the best standard builds?

Obtena.7952:

I’m going to offer the ever-popular response:

No class was ever balanced, designed or conceived based solely on the skills of another.

That applies to any single skill or family of skills as well. If any consideration is made of ‘between profession’ factors, at best it’s a litmus test of what the developer deems ‘reasonable’. Based on how I’ve interacted with Devs over the years and how they interact with the community, I’m convinced there is no line of thought they enter that relates how or what Class A does because of how or what Class B does it.
/snip

This must be the reason I have never played an MMO that has decent class balance, although GW2 takes the cake for the almost seemly random numbers they place on things.

I distinctly remember when the game was first in development and a lot of players complained about how short all the boons lasted and the dev team said that was an intentional decision because long lasting boons was something they were against. Now with the release of the Revenant, you have a class that can permanently keep up their choice of fury, swiftness, protection, and stack might without having to do anything and can give an entire party +50% boon duration.

Rodzynald.5897:

Cause DH gets weak when focused but other professions have such capabilities of face tanking everything with CC/blind fest and strong regenerating passives (or boons that wildly activate here and there).

^ This. DH is a fine trait line. It wrecks in WvW … It does exactly what it needs to do in PVE … it can stand toe-to-toe against most other classes solo …

It just can’t compete in a meta that is all about speed and being just shy of unkillable, which is the two things Guardians can’t accomplish. And judging from Anet’s responses on Guardian’s tankiness/movement speed perhaps never will.

Vieux P.1238:

Since when, since they still are the number 1 mmo on the market with still over 5 million subscribers still paying they 15$ monthly to lay this broken kitten but still exiting game.

How many is there in Gw2? & you know what, it’s not hard to see by the content of post on the forum that ppl are complaining of the problems Gw2 mods have. & on how much lack of ppl are playing it. It always had bin the issue. Not an issue in WoW. so plz don’t compar. I to played WoW for years. I know what it is.

I’m not arguing over the success of WoW, I’m arguing over the success of open-world PVP in WoW which currently doesn’t exists and with the exception of a brief period of time during Vanilla never existed. If GW2 adopted this style, then WvW would not exists at all. It would just be sPVP and PVE/PVP with the PVP part including random ganking and any sort of grieving a small squad of players can think of.

When has open-world PVP ever been truly successful in WoW? I’ve played WoW for years and the only time open-world PVP has thrived is when Blizzard first created their ranking system and was awarding high tier gear for participation. It would be like Anet putting ascended level drops in WvW. Open world PVP has never been successful because the general audience follows loot and loot can’t exist in open-world pvp.

Rodzynald.5897:

EDIT:
There is a poster on the home page of GW2 that depicts a guardian wielding a hammer… hammer revamp confirmed

That is either two revenants disguised as a warrior and guardian, or they wanted to reflect the bottom bracket players.

Stand The Wall.6987:

Anyone telling you that a loss of that much healing power either doesnt know how to do the math or is too lazy to. An increase of even 50% boon duration is useless on most boons that are either spammable (regen, protection) or in cases where you only need them for a few seconds (stability, aegis).

Full Cleric Armor is 1382 Healing Power
Full Crusader Armor + Cleric accessories is 931 Healing Power.
Difference of 451 HP.
Full Commander Armor + Cleric accessories 535 Healing Power
Difference of 847 HP

List of Healing Coefficients (this list is old, so some changes are to be expected, but I couldn’t find another list that is more current):

ALL RATIOS ROUNDED TO MOST CONVENIENT DIGIT

Regeneration (boon) = 130 base, 0.125 HP ratio
Monk’s Focus (trait) = 1960 base, 0.1 HP ratio
Selfless Daring (trait) = 129 base, 1.0 HP ratio (0.5 HP ratio in pvp)
Writ of the Merciful (trait) = 107 base, 0.075 HP ratio

Weapon Skills
Faithful Strike = 463 base, 0.1 HP ratio
Symbol of Faith = 520 base, 0.5 HP ratio
Orb of Light = 980 base, 0.33 HP ratio
Empower = 1500 base, 1.0 HP ratio
Virtue of Resolve
Virtue of Resolve (passive) = 84 base, 0.06 HP ratio
Virtue of Resolve (boosted) = 243 base, 0.06 HP ratio
Virtue of Resolve (active) = 1625 base, 0.75 HP ratio

Healing skills
Shelter = kitten base, 0.7 HP ratio
Signet of Resolve = 8150 base, 1.25 HP ratio
Healing Breeze (self) = 6525 base, 1.0 HP ratio
Healing Breeze (other) = 1725 base, 1.0 HP ratio

Utilities
Sanctuary = 2660 base, 0.5 HP ratio
Merciful Intervention = 1320 base, 0.2 HP ratio
Heal Area (ToC elite) = 1320 base, 0.5 HP ratio

So switching from Clerics gear: for any skill with a healing coefficient of 1.0 you would notice 451 less healing (crusader), 847 healing (commander), but as you can see from the list most skills are .5 and under, meaning on average you would see less than a 200 (crusader), 400 (commander) healing loss.

I think it is arguable that boon duration doesn’t have a strong place in raids since all worthwhile boons will be kept up by other people, although extending Feel My Wrath’s duration to almost double seems very strong. But, for the general HOT content, I would still recommend Commander gear over Cleric gear if your goal is you want to feel tanky / provide worthwhile support / and have good damage.

Currently running all Berserker, but when I first got into HOT I had to change to Soldiers until I learn the mobs better.

Longbow makes most things fairly easy due to its range. Procession of Blades and Test of Faith are incredibly helpful as well. Procession for its damage and ToF for the protection, instant cast, and traited daze. Don’t overlook daze in PVE, because that 1s can give you time to get away, interrupt, block, and does sizable damage to break bars.

I will most likely get ridicule for this, but Spirit Hammer is really helpful and has become a mainstay on my bar in general PVE. For some reason it has very high aggro and it is somewhat tanky against everything except for the bigger bosses. It also helps for break bars in some of the later areas (chak).

The only real issue I consistently encounter is the frogs. Longbow sucks against them (due to evades) and they have 2 different burst abilities that almost 1-shot me.

Exedore.6320:

Indure.5410:

Like you said Zeal works great for PVE and not as well for PVP, but changing it to a Retaliation line makes zero sense. It would cripple it in PVE since Retal is worthless and PVP should not be balance around a passive unskilled benefit.

Read my suggestions. It doesn’t expect Retaliation to do amazing damage. Instead, it makes having retaliation more beneficial.

I did.

“Minor

Zealot’s Wrath (just a rename of current Zealot’s Speed)
Retribution: Deal extra damage while under the effects of Retaliation
When retaliation you apply deals damage, apply 2x 3s vulnerability to that attacker. No ICD since no extra damage is dealt directly."

Retribution: Just another boring 10% damage modifier. If I had to choose between fiery Wrath or Retribution it would be Fiery Wrath since only GS provides Retal (not counting other trait lines), while burning comes from so many sources.

Retaliation applies vulnerability: Helpful in PVP, weak in PVE, makes more sense in Valor line where you are traited to take a beating.

My suggestion for sword is to specialize it for the “go to” weapon for condi builds, since it already fits in nicely for them.

Auto-attack:
Of course, make the necessary changes to Sword Wave to improve the 3 hit reliance. Keep Sword Arc the same damage, but make it two attacks. Creating sword AA chain into 6 hits and with Supreme Justice 2 burn procs.

Flashing Blade:
Kept functionally the same, but leaves a fire wall exactly like Burning Speed behind the teleport (and a little in front of it so the target ends up in the field).

Zealot’s Defense:
Kept functionally similar. Make it move-while-casting. Same damage, but 9 attacks instead of 8 to gain 3 Justice procs. It’s a projectile attack, so give it a projectile finisher of 20%, to be used with the new fire wall you can create.