Guild Wars 2

Aight the builds are all completely updated for the recent patch.
I put a NEW sign next to them if there’s more than 1 or 2 changes.

Please tell me if there’s anything wrong or if you think there are any better builds to look into, thanks!! =)

http://tinyurl.com/SilvenGuardianBuilds

That’s why I’ve written this up, we already had fury before the buff to meditations so it did nothing to be honest.
DPS =/= burst builds.
DPS has staying power (so damage consistently) meditations are used for burst due to having no staying power.

lilz shorty.1879:

Jax.5261:

Most people here are talking about Meditation Guardians, which are burst, not DPS. They don’t have nearly as much sustain as a DPS Guardian build, 0530305.

I didn’t bother reading large slabs of text in the last few pages because 99% of them are referring to burst not have staying power, which is a dumb complaint because none of the burst builds do.

BURST =/= DPS

Another thing, if you’re having trouble landing Guardian burst you’re using the wrong weapons, you can check out my build guide here: http://tinyurl.com/SilvenGuardianBuilds , make sure you’re using the correct weapons first (and know how to play) before claiming how easy they are to dodge (because they’re not).

@CMF
Any thief build can be 1-shot by a Guard burst build and they’re pretty hard countered by them too.

Lol med guards have more dps than any other spec lol. I don’t know what you are talkin about. The only one worth playing is medz because in tPvP, your shouts will be without anyway of actually bursting your target is such a waste, words can’t even describe lol. First learn play your build against any good team and see how easy you can land any of your attacks without judges let alone be effective with your “dps”, before you tell me I should learn to know how to play dps guard. Lol…good joke

lol
This is the most backwards thing I’ve read in a while.

We already had Fury, don’t know why they couldn’t see that.

New builds coming this week, all will be updated from the patch!

Most people here are talking about Meditation Guardians, which are burst, not DPS. They don’t have nearly as much sustain as a DPS Guardian build, 0530305.

I didn’t bother reading large slabs of text in the last few pages because 99% of them are referring to burst not have staying power, which is a dumb complaint because none of the burst builds do.

BURST =/= DPS

Another thing, if you’re having trouble landing Guardian burst you’re using the wrong weapons, you can check out my build guide here: http://tinyurl.com/SilvenGuardianBuilds , make sure you’re using the correct weapons first (and know how to play) before claiming how easy they are to dodge (because they’re not).

@CMF
Any thief build can be 1-shot by a Guard burst build and they’re pretty hard countered by them too.

lilz shorty.1879:

Anet,

I think its about time you actually talk to a dps guard if you want to actually help us. WE are the ONLY class that has not been talked about or brought up in Sotg’s and it is about time you ask us personally on the forums or talk to us in game. The little fury added to meditations is not nearly enough to solve the biggest issue we have. The fact that our 2 hardest hitting skills require judges to land most of the skill, and we are melee, and we have no cc/cripple/immob/chill makes me wonder if you actually understand what a dps guardian even is.

Anyone who is a decent player knows how easy it is to just avoid our burst and kite it, by just strafing. Judges does not solve that problem at. It helps us land 25-50% of our burst unless the target just dodges(randomly or not), phase retreats, etc….Therefore we waste 2 skills that have a quite a cd. That would be fine if we had more immobalizes and didn’t always get kited. But since we are melee, our main dps weapons, sword and greatsword, can be so easily kited without any immobilizes, cripple, chills, etc…WE ARE THE ONLY MELEE CLASS WITHOUT SUCH A THING.

IMHO, next time you want to help us as a dps guard, you should think about those things first, rather than giving us fury. I would rather have judges chill our target or immobalize rather than burn.

I don’t know if you intend for them to never have such a trait/skill, but every update we never get anything even worth mentioning compared to other classes. It is quite sad. I am not talking about bunker here either. I could care less about bunker. We all know bunker works. I think its about time you actually shed some light on us rather then saying in the preview, “oh and this should help you dps guardians out there a little bit,” without even asking us what we specifically lack.

You’re using the wrong weapons btw, that’s probably why you think the way you do.

Nigron.9620:

I play a Rune of the Soldier + Purity of voice Bunker guardian. Which means I have 3 shouts and each removes 2 conditions from myself every 24 to 48 seconds. I also have purity which removes 1 condition on a 10 second cooldown. Over the course of a fight a condition necro will eventually kill me in 1v1. If they are staff and scepter/focus. Their sustained damage and corrupt boon will eventually take me down. That leaves a 4v4 at the other point which lends to the fact that condition does indeed eventually take down bunker builds. If you really want to defeat a bunker build. Send 1 burst and 1 condition. Like theif+necro. Once their loaded with conditions pop the fear and Assasins trinket to burst them down for the finish. It’s what me and my friend do vs bunkers. That would mean there’s a 3v4 at another point. But assuming we have a bunker too then we would be winning that point. Bunkers add strategy to the game. A condition build can 1v1 a bunker over time. Or a condition + a burst can take them down quickly with some strong cc after you bait out some of their cooldowns. By quickly I mean 20 seconds or so which may be enough time for the enemy team to react but in my experience it usually means a capped point at least.

Nah the other team will run Svanir runes and break the stun to be invincible for ages, along with the mace block bug.
They’ll also use their Tome of Courage with perma stability to full heal everybody, you can’t do much about that.

Does 18k damage per second.
Mesmer buffed guys!
;)

The following builds don’t work in every set up nor against every set up.
Hard Counter Build
http://tinyurl.com/lj5dahf

• If you’re just looking for a complete hard counter run this, it’s still very strong, just you need to have the right team comp for you to play roamer.

Effective Builds
http://tinyurl.com/kzpye8e

• Slight change from the current DPS build to be slightly stronger against Warriors specifically.
• Forgot the sigils: Mace – Fire, Focus – Minor Accuracy

http://tinyurl.com/kjhnvt5

• Standard DPS build, extremely effective against everything and not specialized against Warriors, strong against them either way.
• Remember the Staff is almost always the most effective weapon against Warriors because you can get a few people buffed to easily take them down.

Bunker Guardians are all very strong against Warriors and can easily hold their point against them, I suggest 00103030 if you’re having trouble (I don’t recommend the 0530305 for uncoordinated teams).

Me fight player 1v1 and I win but he don’t die and he run. I chase him, he’s dishonourable, and I die to their whole team because me only looking at the fraction of the screen directly infront of my character.
I post on forums, this game unfair, nobody honour.

The problem with polling the community is that they’re going to get answers that just buff classes (regardless of what is / would be OP).
Out of the responses above 11-12 out of those 13 would be too overpowered in pvp, there isn’t really an easy solution to this either, due to the nature of the way they want to design their game.

Justin ODell.9517:

I may be stepping on a landmine here, but are you saying custom arena and hot jobs are what you are expecting to be random?

Just going to quickly mention majority of people are talking about tournament queue. To a lot of people it doesn’t seem random (I personally haven’t had this problem, so maybe they’re exaggerating or maybe there’s something buggy with their queues in particular) but there are a lot of people who don’t realise it’s just tournament queue that’s meant to be random.
But you can see by majority of the threads complaining on this forum that they are referring to tournament queue.

kaotiktheory.8942:

Still not convinced this is random. Whenever me and my friends start pvp, and I mean EVERY TIME… The first map is always Skyhammer, then Foefire, then Khylo. We usually just stick around for 3 maps for the daily.

This only happens when we join a server with 0 players. The only way around it is if we join a server with players in it already (but then we risk not all of us getting in).

This made me laugh.
I like these forums.

Ralkuth.1456:

Outside of the Shield of Wrath and JI combo Guardians don’t have major burst skills.
As Silven has suggested SoW -> CoL -> ZD + VoJ + JI + Smite Condi -> Torch 4 is pretty reliable. CoL into Torch is easily seen and people can push some evades.
You are pretty much reliant on Autoattacks on the Sword and your Scepter after the initial SoW opening burst, there’s not a lot you can do. They do hit pretty hard though and Sigil of Flame helps.

GS can be run with meditation, I’ve seen some builds like 10/25/30/5/0 with Flame Legion runes that sacrifice sustain for Burn duration and something like a 25% damage boost when your enemy is on fire, and WW can hit for something like 7k, Leap of Faith can do 4k in sPvP on glasscannons. The rotation is SoW -> RoJ -> CoL -> WW pre-cast + JI + Smite Condi + VoJ -> LoF -> BB -> Auto

Mace Burst can hit harder and is actually viable in pvp, Greatsword has extremely few uses (mainly against 2 thief comps) and only on a symbol DPS Guard.
That’s why you don’t see top players including it in their builds and why I highly recommend against it.

Carpboy.7145:

Im trying to figure out the burst rotation in WvW for a roaming guard. Currently using this.

http://gw2skills.net/editor/?fUAQRAsf7dlUgiDnGyNEfIFRuArHA8g+DXw1DIGxGC-jEDB4LDimgAisI0UBApPFRjtZoIas6FYqTQ6TK1aXAWzAeDMa1yAovFA-w

When im running around i always start out in Sce/F. I know to precast SoW, and since im 5 in virtues i hit VoJ as well. Half a second before shield explodes i use JI and Sce #3 and cast smite. Then i usually swap to Sw/T and if they start to run away(everyone does) then Sw2 or 3, or hit torch 4 twice for a big nuke.

That site doesn’t count RHS, so running with 51% crit chance. On oct 15 Meds are getting the fury trait, so 70%.

Quick Key:
Sc = Scepter
Fc = Focus
Sw = Sword
Tc = Torch

For full burst (more easily avoided due to the torch)
Start on Sc-Fc

• Fc5
• Wait 1 second
• Scepter 3
• Swap weapons to Sw-Tc
• Tc4
• Tc4 again + F1
• Sw3
• Wait 0.1 of a second (pretty much just wait a split second really)
• Judge’s Intervention + Smite Condition

For reliable burst (doesn’t do all the damage at the same time)
Start on Sc-Fc

• Fc5
• Wait 2 seconds
• Scepter 3
• Swap weapons to Sw-Tc
• Sw3 + F1
• Wait 0.1 of a second (you know the drill!)
• Judge’s Intervention + Smite Condition
• Tc4
• Tc4 again (this is to hit them while they run)

Hope that helped, shield is also a good option instead of the torch. You can use it to interrupt the heal after you burst and then kill them with sword dps + sw2.

jportell.2197:

Jax.5261:

jportell.2197:

blah blah

I’ll elaborate further so everybody can understand. In easy dot points yayyy!!

• Meditation builds are burst only.
• AH builds are backpoint or point assault.
• AH builds can also support the team fight, they hybridize.
• Bunker builds rely on regeneration, dodges and shelter/rf to live. They can easily hold a point for kitten against two players. If you can’t you’re doing it wrong and if nobody could do it the build would be changed so they could.
• Meditation Guards are not terrible in team fights, they play a different role (roamer)
• AH on a bunker is only used currently due to PoV bug meaning you don’t need many points in Virtues. In 9 days this won’t be the case.
• Guardians have to spec heavily into heals, it restricts a lot of our builds completely, I don’t mind this but if you were to put majority of our survivability on a low investment passive then we would have a lot more choices for builds (like warriors).

Saying Guardians have the highest HPS and thus are OP is just stupid. I’ve seen a lot of your other threads on the forums and it’s a lot of misinformed whining. You are now more informed.

Number one kitten. never said guards were OP. In fact I have never once whined about guards. Reading comprehension is a great thing! Number two Med guards are good roamers because they are DPS. And the POV change should not come in because condi meta is kitten strong still and needs a good counter to it. And what better class to counter it than the “healer” class of this game.

Guardians do infact have the highest Health Per Second gain in this game and that is through AH and shouts plus symbols that provide boons… No other class can match the amount of healing a guardian can dish on themselves and their teammates in group fights.

However once again I never said nor will I ever say guards are OP. They have their weaknesses and are not end all cheese all builds like say warriors atm.

We don’t need the PoV bug, it’s only good for a variety of builds. Guardian meta is Support/Bunker/Control, there are no healers in this game, just support.
Meditation guards are burst only not DPS, they have no sustain.
Guardians do support really well but they don’t have an insane passive which nullifies large amounts of damage with NO downside, we have to burn cooldowns and spec specifically just to support. Healing Signet can be played on any kind of Warrior regardless of spec or style.
You also said they were OP in your first post or so, that’s why I was commenting.

The whole point of the thread is that Warriors have a really stupid HPS passive which takes no investment or skill to use and it completely overshadows Guardian ACTIVE skills and heavy trait investment.
Your argument has no merit.

jportell.2197:

blah blah

I’ll elaborate further so everybody can understand. In easy dot points yayyy!!

• Meditation builds are burst only.
• AH builds are backpoint or point assault.
• AH builds can also support the team fight, they hybridize.
• Bunker builds rely on regeneration, dodges and shelter/rf to live. They can easily hold a point for kitten against two players. If you can’t you’re doing it wrong and if nobody could do it the build would be changed so they could.
• Meditation Guards are not terrible in team fights, they play a different role (roamer)
• AH on a bunker is only used currently due to PoV bug meaning you don’t need many points in Virtues. In 9 days this won’t be the case.
• Guardians have to spec heavily into heals, it restricts a lot of our builds completely, I don’t mind this but if you were to put majority of our survivability on a low investment passive then we would have a lot more choices for builds (like warriors).

Saying Guardians have the highest HPS and thus are OP is just stupid. I’ve seen a lot of your other threads on the forums and it’s a lot of misinformed whining. You are now more informed.

jportell.2197:

Jax.5261:

jportell.2197:

Jax.5261:

jportell.2197:

Lonewolf Kai.3682:

^not sure if serious….

If you are your team fight bunker then I am dead serious… Meditation heals are selfish in team fights and do jack for your team. AH plus shouts/symbols is some very high HPS. If I ever had a team fight bunker running meditations in tourneys I would say GTFO. Meditations are fine for back bunking not for team bunking. And yes guardians do have the highest HPS in the game.

Edit: A meditation guard can survive 1v2 for awhile. An AH guard can’t survive as long… The two builds just work differently.

You’re completely wrong actually.
I’ll let you contemplate why before telling you

So you would rather have a meditation guardian in a team fight? Have fun with that!

Sorry, you’re right about the fact that meditation Guardians are terrible in teamfights. You are wrong about everything else though. I was over exaggerating because your head’s extremely far up your butt and you don’t know what you’re talking about.

What do you think keeps bunker Guardians alive? Because you seem to think it’s regeneration + AH, which is wrong.

Regen/AH/Boons/High HPS/Blocks Tons of heals in weapons and skills

Need I go on? Must you try educating me more oh wise one that knows all and sees all or can you remove your foot from your mouth now.

Dodges.

jportell.2197:

Jax.5261:

jportell.2197:

Lonewolf Kai.3682:

^not sure if serious….

If you are your team fight bunker then I am dead serious… Meditation heals are selfish in team fights and do jack for your team. AH plus shouts/symbols is some very high HPS. If I ever had a team fight bunker running meditations in tourneys I would say GTFO. Meditations are fine for back bunking not for team bunking. And yes guardians do have the highest HPS in the game.

Edit: A meditation guard can survive 1v2 for awhile. An AH guard can’t survive as long… The two builds just work differently.

You’re completely wrong actually.
I’ll let you contemplate why before telling you

So you would rather have a meditation guardian in a team fight? Have fun with that!

Sorry, you’re right about the fact that meditation Guardians are terrible in teamfights. You are wrong about everything else though. I was over exaggerating because your head’s extremely far up your butt and you don’t know what you’re talking about.

What do you think keeps bunker Guardians alive? Because you seem to think it’s regeneration + AH, which is wrong.

Seriously guys stop.
If you think shouts are going to be bad after this patch

You are completely and 150% wrong

Wrong, wrong, wrong, wrong, wrong. For majority of the game PoV has removed one, as I said before it’s only a slight nerf and just phases out one build completely (which isn’t that good to begin with) and removes some optionals for others.

Does that mean it should be fixed? No, it’s good the way it is, it’s balanced and gives Guardians a lot of options. Does that mean it will be bad when it is fixed? NO

So please stop the complaining because the bug changing it to two is only like 2 or 3 months old.

Dodging counters it completely btw, same with GS pull.
This means you have two opportunities to dodge them, you’re doing it wrong.

jportell.2197:

Lonewolf Kai.3682:

^not sure if serious….

If you are your team fight bunker then I am dead serious… Meditation heals are selfish in team fights and do jack for your team. AH plus shouts/symbols is some very high HPS. If I ever had a team fight bunker running meditations in tourneys I would say GTFO. Meditations are fine for back bunking not for team bunking. And yes guardians do have the highest HPS in the game.

Edit: A meditation guard can survive 1v2 for awhile. An AH guard can’t survive as long… The two builds just work differently.

You’re completely wrong actually.
I’ll let you contemplate why before telling you

You are only as pigeon-holed as you think you are.

Guys…. it was a recent bug. You’re acting like it existed since the start of the game.
Further more:

• Builds will go back to the previous evolution or remain unchanged,
  - Bunker Guard 103030
  - DPS 530305
• Sanctuary is amazing, don’t downplay it as a consecration, it is one of the best Guardian skills.

We will lose a choice of Lyssa runes for DPS and the 530305 Bunker build (which imo is inferior to 103030 or 553030 anyway). The bug gave us a few more options and although I personally was hoping it was intentional, it isn’t terrible for us.

Guardians still hard counter Warriors, you just have to use the correct build. Also there’s almost no chance dying to 1v1 (except if you don’t run PoV and they’re Sw-Sh/LB).

Yes, the passive heal is overpowered and is badly designed.
Healing Signet shouldn’t surpass 100hp / second on the passive (absolute max), but this doesn’t hurt the Guardian’s, current, significant advantage over warriors.

A bunker Guardian won’t die to a Warrior 1v1 and running Zerka amulet will give you enough damage to win in a 1v1. Maybe you’re not running the right build?

Lux.7169:

For what it’s worth there was a group of us all watching one stream. I realize you’re asking for literal “viewers on the stream” because situations like mine apply to other games such as LoL, but a group of 7 of us watched most of the matches on a big screen in our apartment. We had a lot of fun placing bets on the matches and rushing to make twitch accounts to vote XD.

You’re not wrong there! People could have multiple windows open so it was probably like 1,000!

Maybe Arena Net opened up a coupl’a hundred windows to give them a few extra viewers!
Clearly I’m joking but all games have the same problems with counting exact viewer numbers, you can just compare the viewership to other games, the exact number doesn’t matter because all of them have similar viewership differences.

Xom.9264:

GW1 folks…. lol, plenty of threads to state your opinion this is not one of them, it would be like me jumping in a tread about WM GW1 wins saying WoW deadly glads >>>>> GW1 gold trim, yes we know its true but it would still be rude.

This is about a team that reached the top of GW2, grats on the win and well done DE.

Plugins take so much skill.
You have to download the program and then click yes and then now you’re the best.

Skill.

Jayroc.2768:

Teamfights/securing stomps/good mobility. Did some more testing in last couple days and i do not think the build i posted will work. Main goal is that I would like to play a spec with mace and sword with descent dmg using shouts to help survive alittle more than using medi utilities, if that is even possible trait wise. I have a rotation that i feel very comfortable with using those weapons. Thanks for your time.

Okay, Ideally you’d want to run a DPS build (meaning symbol DPS) and not what you’re trying for now. But I did have decent success today trying out this for you:
http://tinyurl.com/lpdyus2

The shield with mace is for the interrupt on their heal because I start sword → mace in the burst combo. This will allow you to stomp/res and deal decent damage in team fights. But being less squishy means way less damage and a couple of classes you can’t deal with anymore (engineer mainly). It has less sustain than a DPS build too but it fits what you want to do, so if you feel you’d be better with the setup you asked for then run this otherwise run DPS.

Important things to note (I played about 15 teamq matches on my smurf with this)

• Keep up your dps, if you stop auto-attacking you’re back to square one
• Interrupt important skills with your shield
• Use dodgerolls correctly and often or you’ll die regardless
• Use shouts to support your team as well as yourself
• “Juke-Roll”, I’m not sure what to call it but when I dodge roll through enemies backwards it takes a second to follow me as a target (even against top players) thus making LoS skills harder to land for them. In hotjoin/low ranked q you can sometimes completely confuse them ending up in stealing bosses and living, juking entire teams, etc.

Hope this helped.

Worst thread I’ve seen posted. Ever.

Jayroc.2768:

Jax, your mace burst spec is alot of fun and is very well thought out. Never would thought of playing guard in that style but its awesome. Just for me it’s a bit squish for my play style so I’m trying to modify the mace burst with my own spec to fit my play style. I created a post that references your guide cause my post is kinda long. If you have time could u critque it please or see if it is even viable? Here’s my post https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/professions/guardian/alternate-1h-guard-burst-spec/first#post2930908 . I know I wont get the same dmg and i’m ok with that. I’m having success with a modified 0/5/30/30/5 spec but I think I can do better with something else. I’m using flashing blade to teleport instead of Judge’s Intervention.

What are you trying to achieve with the build? For example: the mace burst build is specifically designed to deal with roamers/condi aoe classes. It’s hard to comment on the build if you don’t specify an objective.

Poplolita.2638:

stuff [/quote]

I did predict you’d eventually backtrack into not directly replying as each post you’d slowly give ground because you’ve got no idea what you’re talking about. Now you’re at “I only think this because I copied and pasted somebody else who was wrong”. I don’t know where you’re getting this magical “half the community” number because it’s also clearly, totally wrong.

Have fun in your delusion.

Mathias.9657:

GW1 isn’t an MMO? News to me, for the last 7 years I thought I was playing with thousands of people in an online role playing game.

Guess not lol.

No the definition of MMO changes when some random person feels he doesn’t want it to be in the same category, we don’t go by actual definitions here apparently!

Arachnid.4062:

Jax.5261:

Chopps.5047:

Make spvp free to play is the biggest thing they could do. Right?

No.
A good game that has a one off cost > bad game that’s free.

I agree. I think the game right now is a great deal for $40.

I was implying that they should make the game good because if they’re not going to do that then he’s right.
A bad game with a one off cost (GW2 currently) < bad game that’s free.

Chopps.5047:

Make spvp free to play is the biggest thing they could do. Right?

No.
A good game that has a one off cost > bad game that’s free.

Poplolita.2638:

Jax.5261:

Poplolita.2638:

Jax.5261:

Poplolita.2638:

Jax.5261:

Poplolita.2638:

Archaon.6245:

Poplolita.2638:

Archaon.6245:

Teutos.8620:

*) Best balancing of all MMORPGs!

Could you name me any other MMO (NO GW1 IS NOT A MMO) that has no gear advantage, and the same amazing combat potential (Potential is the key word in case you got some reading comprehension issue).

I can do even more…i can show you a game 10 times better than this.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iMsQhI089Qk

Even if full caps, you can’t read. What else, are you going to link me Lol? Do you know what’s a mmo (RHETORICAL QUESTION!)?

M assive
Pretty obvious, massive amount of players playing.
http://www.guildwars.com/events/press/releases/pressrelease-2009-04-24.php
M ultiplayer
Well, we all know it’s multiplayer.
O nline
It’s only playable online.
RPG
You roleplay as a character in the game, straight forward.

I’m struggling to find the aspect of the term MMORPG you simply don’t comprehend? Have you played the game? You may want to play it before you continue to make a fool of yourself.

The people who call it an MMO are the ones who want to turn it into one.

Quote from official GW website:

“Rather than labeling Guild Wars an MMORPG, we prefer to call it a CORPG (Competitive Online Role-Playing Game). Guild Wars was designed from the ground up to create the best possible competitive role-playing experience.”

Also, Massive/multiplayers:

Those words are used together to describe thousands of people playing at the same time in the same WORLD. Which is simply not the case with guild war. The only zone where guild war is persitent is the town.

However, in the actual world pve, The difference is this: In Guild Wars, the possibility to run into other groups is zero. In actual MMOs, it’s 100%. We don’t care whether people talk outside towns. The important thing is whether you CAN. Persistance and Seamlessness = MMO. Guild wars has none of those. It has more similarities with diablo 3 than guild war 2 or EQ1/2, or wow.

It’s simply not fully a mmo.

Massive Multiplayer Online = MMO, your opinion and Arena Net’s opinion is irrelevant.
In ArenaNet’s opinion this game is an E-Sport, it is not. Arena Net wanted to distinguish their game from others so that people would think it was more unique, that doesn’t make it not an MMO.

Then even with your unique definition of an MMO, GW1 would still be classed as an MMO due to outposts being able to hold the amount of player’s you’re satisfied with. By your definition no game is an MMO because they have instances where you can’t fit every single player in the game in at once.

Well done.

How is your opinion more relevant than I and arenaNet’s?? I’m sorry, but In GW, the most people you can have at a time in an instance is 24, which is nowhere near ‘massive’. I ignored outposts altogether simply because they are a microscopic part of GW in terms of content.
Now even though I don’t believe GW is an MMO, I do think that as of yet there is no better genre to describe what GW is like. The best way I could describ it is that it’s a mix of diablo 3 and traditional mmo.

Because it’s the definition not your opinion that matters.

We are talking about one of the most controversial game in mmo industry when it concerns its genre. Not sure why you consider your own vision of gw the absolute truth.

I asked you guys a question, I decided to excluse gw because it’s officialy not considered fully a mmo by it’s own owner, not because of my own vision of gw. And if you feel It’s wrong, you can always check the statistic and see by yourself that half of gw community doesn’t consider it a mmo. Or you can make a thread about “gw a mmo?” see overall people reaction, make another one about “EQ2 a mmo?”, and compare them.

I’m sorry, but at this point, it’s your pov, against arenaNet pov. A valid ad hominem when a subject is that controversial.

It isn’t remotely controversial, you just want it to be so (for attention I assume). There’s no big debate and barely any people think it isn’t an MMO (mainly because it’s pretty stupid to think so) so you’re talking out of your behind.

Then we can continue to poke wholes in your argument, even though your argument is irrelevant to begin with. Using your terrible logic again you would conclude that this post was a waste of time because Arena Net said this game was an E-Sport therefore, with your logic, it is an E-Sport. So there was no need for you to post this thread because you have your backwards answer already.

Rattus.1462:

On further thoughts, I believe this topic is misleading as it does not address the true scourge of the pvp forums.

This little guy.

You sunk my Battle Cruiser

Also!
The GS / S-F was designed specifically for trying to quickly aoe burst people down in teamfights when they’re resing/stomping allies so that you can turn the tide of a teamfight or simply win it, while still having strong 1v1 capabilities. There really isn’t too much point to running a GS, it’s either a res/stomp secure weapon or “I hope they haven’t learnt how to press dodge yet!” so I’d avoid it.

If you really want to play a meditation build I’d run something like this:
http://tinyurl.com/m7k2qlm
With Contemplation of Purity unless you think they’ll have a Guardian or Warrior pushing your close point, then you’d run SYG.

Lexiculus.5296:

Yeah, I really don’t like playing bunker when I can’t communicate effectively with most of the team. Usually, if I have at least a couple of guildies on my team, we can move around well and I can get support rather quickly. Sadly though, hot joins and even most solo queues are frustrating as a bunker because the support/movement just isn’t reliable.

And then you have the ragers in solo q who * because I died and gave up a point while facing a 3v1. Sad… and then I’m left wondering why we haven’t capped any other points while I am single-handedly dodge dancing my way around 3 enemies.

Just run the 2hd DPS build in soloq (Hammer/Staff) it’s much easier to carry, you can also win 2/3v1’s with it sometimes.

mrook.4163:

Silven,
For reasons of an odd team comp my team has been going back to the idea of a guardian homepoint defender. I have been experimenting with symbol and meditation builds, with more success coming from your GS/S+F meditation build. It is strong in most 1v1s and mobile enough to help mid or put pressure on far. However with the overwhelming amount of H/LB warriors I was having some trouble. I have made some adjustments and think I have something closer to the old meditation homepoint defender that works quite well right now. However I am not just asking for feedback on these changes, but also for any ideas you may have for homepoint guardian or suggestions for fighting these warriors.

Here is the build based on your current meditation builds and my memory of your old homepoint one that is adapted to deal with these warriors:
http://gw2skills.net/editor/?fUAQNAR7dlYgSDXFSOEfIFRuArHB0g+DXw1DIGxGC-TsAA1CnIKSVkrITRyisFNsYZxGCA

The reason I switched from meditations to the 2hd DPS build for side points is because it has much stronger sustain, mobility and does much better in team fights. The only reason to run a meditation build on side point is so that you can deal with Necros/Engis in teamfights, usually you’d have a roamer to play that role.
I always run something like this while playing home point now: http://tinyurl.com/kjhnvt5

• You have fantastic support, sustain and DPS in teamfights
• You have the mobility to be in mid teamfights and hold your side point
• You can steal bosses and defend the lord pretty well
• You can deal with most far point push builds, especially thieves, warriors and mesmers

You have one big weakness and that’s the Ranger, you have to call your roamer as soooon as you possibly can to come help you out or you will lose the point (assuming they’re not bad).

Khenzy.9348:

What about Torch’s 5 skill, Cleansing Flame, working on the Guardian casting the skill too (with proper adjustments where needed)?? You no longer need Pure of Voice or Absolute Resolution… on a DPS weapon! you can now push towards a fully DPS trait set up (and other utility skills included!).

tadah! you now have more build diversity. They should learn from their own changes, improving weapon skills to gain, again, build diversity!… Flanking Strike anyone? <—- without overdoing it though!

Amins.3710:

CONDI GUARDIAN 4TW!!!! ZOMG, WE CAN DO IT>..

Just not sure how…..

Just Imagine something like this:

http://gw2skills.net/editor/?fUAQRArf8dlYgKCnESIEfIFSuArHEECVQVPin6xDxFA-jkDB4LDimCMQEBhO/RQMFSZtEMaFRgVRBpYCVVLRKbYqYC1GzER1W0YSBAxCA-w

There may be more optimal build obviously (I just made that above in a couple of minutes to prove my point).

With what I said above, with an improved torch you’d have condi removal, if Zealot’s Flame gave swiftness or something (or flashing blade no longer requiring a target or whatever…) you’d have mobility, reducing Signet cast times to make them more reliable… If Guardians had an additional damaging condition, let’s say: Kindled Zeal trait, in adition to it’s current effect, you now apply 3 stacks of Torment for 5 seconds whenever you blind your opponent (yeah it would make Renewed Justice OP but it’s just an example); you could make some competitive condi Guards for sure.

My point is, Condition Guardians are not that far off imo. Let’s hope for some clever balance choises on future patches.

There is a current condi-Guard, just nothing like what you just mentioned.

https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/professions/guardian/Silven-s-PvP-Guardian-Build-Guide

Made it for a reason

Alexei.4698:

Amins.3710:

CONDI GUARDIAN 4TW!!!! ZOMG, WE CAN DO IT>..

Just not sure how…..

Burning, man, burning!

1. Place 90s of +CondDmg Burning on target
2. Run around while it takes effect
3. ?
4. Profit!

The only way you’d manage to “Profit!” from step four is if step three was:
3. Place a large bet that your enemy is going to destroy you.

Wukunlin.8461:

What if they added something like destruction of the empowered they gave to warriors but on guardians is like: deal x% more damage for each condition on you?

Then I would throw my head back and chortle because they missed the mark again.

I admire what you’re trying to do but unfortunately you can still be easily 1 shot bursted and conditions will completely crush you. At the moment the meta revolves around condition play and you won’t be able to deal with a bunker Guardian either.
The only useful support actions you want to be able to do for your team are clear their conditions and secure stomps/reses, neither of which you can do effectively, unfortunately.

You can improve all aspects of the build by running this: http://tinyurl.com/kjhnvt5.

Red.3572:

Personally I just don’t see why conditions are about damage in the first place… There are some potentially powerful and interesting effects in there but instead the focus is on how many you have on you and how far they drop your hp. I mean honestly how redundant is that when you already have a power spec to begin with?

This is why I’m in favour of nuking the condition damage system for the most part and make conditions outside of potentially bleeding to be more about effect. A soft CC effect some classes have that augments their damage.

Chill for example is effectively a weak version of Diversion from GW 1 (one of the best designed skills in the game). Using a skill while this debuff was on you would take that skill out of play for a significantly encounter defining amount of time.

Imagine if Necro Staff 3 or Chilblains did semi-decent damage, was single target, well telegraphed, was costly to use (I guess in this game that’s simply animation time and cool down), but utterly discouraged skill spam out-side of auto attack? If conditions were played like that in an environment with controlled evades like Helseth and Jax have mentioned, you wouldn’t need so many of them on one build and they would be so much more rewarding to play…

Edit:

Wanted to add that immobilise already works like this. Guardian sceptre immobilise for example is a perfect example of how conditions should work. It insanely powerful , short duration, yet doesn’t do a single bit of damage.

Although I agree with most of what you are saying, the problem at the moment is everything is spam, not just conditions, defensive skills are all spammed too. To fix this we have to list the ideal direction for the solution.

• Clumping/Balling up together must be punishable by AoE skills
• AoE skills must have large drawbacks as their affects can be many times stronger than normal skills
• Evading incorrectly should be punished harshly
• Nothing should be spammable
• All skills need a 3/4s (important survival skills usually) – 1s (most skills) cast time (or higher) unless they’re reactive (interrupts / blocks) then they’re instant.

Quickly going to use Mark of Blood (Necro Staff 2) as an example.
It is the perfect skill to analyze because it can actually be balanced. Now (assuming the meta build) it gives 1k healing to allies inside and 3stacks of bleeding AoE (3.5k damage / player) unfortunately the cast time is 3/4s, the recharge is 4.75s and the animation is the same as the other marks.
If the skill was a 20s Recharge, 1s cast time and 4 stacks of bleeding and each enemy player had only 1.5 dodges per 10 seconds this skill would be incredibly strong in the hands of a good player but significantly worse in the hands of a bad player. It would take skill and timing to know when to use it, the AoE would also have to be slightly reduced of course but the point is: this skill and all skills can be balanced fairly easily with basic changes and a change in evades.

Now most important to note here is that I’m hungry and I’m going to go make chicken stir fry mmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmm and will continue later with how to make the game more rewarding… my stomach is grumbling, bai!

New Shout
“Sigh, I have to carry AGAIN!”
Effect: You give each of your allies one of your conditions and gain protection, stability, fury, Regeneration and 10 stacks of might for 12 seconds. Breaks stun.
Cooldown: kitten
Range: 600

Although I haven’t lost a soloq match yet, it’s really hard to carry. If you get 4 new/bad/think they’re good/monkey/non-armed/blind/thief players then you can’t carry, your team will definitely have a higher total combined chromosome count than your enemy.
This way you can carry and not worry about the spirit weapon guardians/p-p thieves/rangers-who-are-not-petting-zoo-based-builds/headshot warriors/condi eles/power necros and just win.

Remember guys your new skills have to be viable across the game so things like “Gimme Shield of Absorption that I can move with that enemies cannot enter but as a trait that has a low cooldown and gives the same effect as AH while being ground targetable in the Zeal tree” Yes this would be a cool skill but almost none of the above requests are viable and you’d have to make significant sacrifices to have them implemented.

Not tryin’ to crap on your dreams, just being realistic.

Pee Sssssssssss

GSSBlunaspike.4153:

Relentliss.2170:

I am not sure what they can do besides more condition removal and duration reduction.

In LoL which has good pvp there are very few Dots. GW2 could have learned something here.

LoL got so much right when it comes to combat. If gw2 would have let condi damage, crit damage, etc scale off of base power they could have avoided the entire stat issue to begin with. Some people will argue that it would have made GW2 too simple, but that would have freed them up to add in the complexity into other areas.

I enjoy games that have good scaling, because it lets you make adjustments to the system without throwing it completely out of control.

For an example assume that bleeding now deals 5% of your power per stack. Oh wait, guys bleeding damage is too powerful. Now instead of having to go through and nerf a variety of things, they simply reduce the ratio to .045 or .04. Yes it’s a somewhat simpler system for stats, but it lets you adjust things. It also frees up build variety. Instead of having to have a set of gear for condi damage, and one for power damage etc you can have one or two sets that cover a variety of different builds.

For a LoL example you have ADs that generally build 4 similar items, the other two items can be changed depending on the ad. So if you imagine the 4 similar items being gear, then the other 2 become different traits. Though LoL has that too where you can set your masteries/runes and then build to augment your deficiencies. It’s like running a support mastery vlad, then for my runes I go with 4% spell vamp, ap, mpen, and then hp/level yellows vs some opponents. I can switch the masteries/runes though depending on who I’m facing. LoL for all of the simplicity behind certain things, has some very complicated things built into it. Those are not part of the game so to speak, the complexity comes with the actual game play. How you build to augment your strengths, and cover your weaknesses. Then the game changes based on each opponent. Then there is the fact that dots in this game are effectively true damage, and there is a reason that is used very sparingly. Once you remove an opponents ability to defend against something you’ve removed counter play from the entire engagement.

Sorry that’s a lot of text, I’ve played LoL since season 1 though. I’ve been with LoL through so many changes, but what I’ve put above is something I really appreciate about the game.

I think a really good point to bring up would be that GW1 got it right in the first place, you know the game they made beforehand. They can look to their previous game rather than one from a different genre.
I’m not saying League shouldn’t influence GW2, but that GW1 should bare a massive influence into the design of GW2 seeing as it was so well designed and they have all the coding/statistics/equipment from it.

Bhawb.7408:

Jax.5261:

And on the same day League only broke 350,000 viewers at once (maybe more I didn’t watch for that long).
So GW2 is behind in Twitch viewers by 348,000 in the best case scenario from above.
How many players even play tournament pvp in GW2 anymore? A couple of thousand ABSOLUTE MAXIMUM so comparing people interest or who play GW2 tpvp to the people watching one League tournament yesterday the difference is around 340,000 people (giving gw2 the best numbers you could hope for).

Are we ESports yet guys?

Not really fair comparing a game with the largest playerbase (they have more people playing every day concurrently than GW2 has games sold) to GW2, especially with how GW2 is split. Also, that was ESL, essentially nothing as far as prizes, compared to a tournament where the winners will get $1mil.

So no, we don’t compare yet to the single largest eSport in the world, not very surprising.

Sorry, what do we compare the game to? Hello Kitty Island Adventures?
What constitutes small enough an E-Sport for us to compare to? Every single E-Sport game is ahead of GW2 in viewers, probably because GW2 isn’t even an E-Sport.
League was just an example of how astronomically behind GW2 is.

Red.3572:

@Jax:

The things you wrote are solid for sure. Some are more passive than I’d be comfortable with but mostly good nonetheless… Problem is I think these would just be a band-aid fix to the problem and we’d end up going in power-creep circles.

GSSBlunaspike is completely correct on this: It’s the condi builds with high offensive output and high investment into defence that’s causing all the issues. Buffing condi removal has the same effect as nerfing condi builds, but it just makes the game even more complicated…

In PvP they need to be forced to use more offensive stats to make the condition damage more effective, so yes a ‘nerf’ to those builds. Arena Net are skirting around the issue (which is fair since condition damage as an option needs time to work) but in all fairness, it’s dull play and they just need to nerf condi’ damage and be done with it. They’ve tried to make condition damage a choice but it failed imo. It should go back to being an augmentation of physical damage instead.

(Just a note before I type anything: This is not flame towards ANet, this is purely my observations from the updates since the Beta and for once I’m not being sarcastic.)

Here’s the problem at the moment: Arena Net’s Mindset.
Currently, they will not want to revamp any part of the game for balance. Maybe this may happen down the road but definitely not in the near future, thus they are searching for band-aid fixes for now. This is most likely due to bigger fixes coming later but they’d take time to implement (we’ll assume this and not that they don’t care, I’m sure they care about their game a great deal).
Thus to give ANet ideas in terms of balance we have to off solutions that are:

• Practical
• Small
• Well thought out, in terms of what the change will interact with

tl;dr: I only offer band-aid solutions because those are the only solutions they’re looking for in this particular forum.

The second part of my post is explaining something that’s continuously looked over by a lot of people.
The problem with the meta condition builds is that they’re spammable and AoE, these two attributes should be mutually exclusive BUT due to the way the game works they also can’t be. This may sound weird but the real nerf is actually needed in evades first and then conditions (ideally at the same time haha). Currently this game takes no skill to play, absolutely none, it’s about spamming defence or spamming offence. If you nerf the offensive abilities then you’re stuck with defensive spam which is equally as broken!
To nerf spam offence we need to reduce evades (including dodges) down to 2 dodges + 1 evade skill per 20seconds MAXIMUM instead of 8+ like every meta build has currently.
Unfortunately this breaks the Guardian and Thief, but again this is a complete revamp, which is why I can’t really suggest it here. It’s an obvious one too, would fix the game a significant deal and allow for much better and fun play. I do know how to revamp the Guardian for these changes so that they wouldn’t be nerfed but that is for another post.

/serious mode off.

And on the same day League only broke 350,000 viewers at once (maybe more I didn’t watch for that long).
So GW2 is behind in Twitch viewers by 348,000 in the best case scenario from above.
How many players even play tournament pvp in GW2 anymore? A couple of thousand ABSOLUTE MAXIMUM so comparing people interest or who play GW2 tpvp to the people watching one League tournament yesterday the difference is around 340,000 people (giving gw2 the best numbers you could hope for).

Are we ESports yet guys?

From a tpvp point of view:

Honestly, in my opinion, in tpvp we’re fine with the condition meta except in 1v1 situations.
Which is a good thing,
except: Guardians who do not spec Bunker or Support should have a way to deal with conditions in a 1 on 1 sense. Keeping that in mind the solutions (which I’ll refer to as X for this next part) should adhere to the following criteria:

• Pure of Voice and X should not be synergetic.
• X should have a heavy investment.
• X should give you significant advantage over those spec’d entirely as a condition spec but not over those with few conditions.

I forgot one point because I had to go take a massive dump, the knowledge has clearly been lost forever in the sewage realm, if it returns to me I will definitely post it.

Using this criteria we can build ideas which don’t break the game. We don’t want to completely destroy condition builds (well maybe you want to but we’ll just break the balance in a different way) so we do have to be careful.
Some ideas for a trait would be (cooldown in brackets):

• When you apply retaliation you lose a condition (2s)
• Critical hits remove 3 conditions from yourself and nearby allies (20s)
• When you apply burning you lose 2 conditions (2s)
• When a condition is applied to you, gain 2 stacks of might for 10s (3s)

This would mean X would take the place of the 25point trait in radiance for it to be viable, resulting in Radiant Power replacing Searing Flames as a 10 point trait.
This gives us a new range of cool viable builds and prevents bunkers from stacking a ton of condition removal without a lot of sacrifice.

• Bunker sacrificing a lot of defence to use X which gives a lot of offence, meaning you get a cool hybrid which would be weak against non-condition players: http://tinyurl.com/pd6mv8f
• DPS sacrificing 2h mastery, hp and PoV/Selfless daring to use X which makes the build extremely strong against condition classes but weaker against others: http://tinyurl.com/ow7ufzq
• Burst would be able to now run more support without the need for contemplation making them more viable in the meta: http://tinyurl.com/op3gprw

This is the only solution I can really see that won’t give us too much power, and it pretty much solves the problems everybody above me is having.
I realise there were a few trait mistakes due to me rushing through, you should know what I mean though, and there are different builds depending on which idea for X would be chosen (15 in virtues would be a strong one for the retal option).

I also didn’t put skill ideas up because I’m lazy and they’d probably be less effective, if you’d like to hear some of the ideas gimme a shout.

Hope this helped theory craft.