Guild Wars 2

LOL at the above post. You credibility plumets with that last sentence.
Staff Elementalists that spec to be tanky through high healing power and high toughness with things such as Shaman amulet or Cleric+cantrips and yada yada, etc. are absurdly overpowered, period. The nerfs are coming, and I’ll remind you when they do if you want.

I completely agree, you should win points by defending a point, too (when fighting others inside one). In pugs everyone is a roamer, in tournies point defenders get little glory and the ones assisting fill their pockets.

You give me a longer range Staff with higher damage and Z axis and I’d be the happiest Guardian ever, you could nerf me to the ground, I wouldn’t even care.

Aside from that, yes, we are pretty strong, besides the gimmicky bunker build, I wouldn’t consider us OP (which I sorf of think is the intention behind this thread).

Leave Warriors alone! They are fun, viable and overall pretty solid. If anything they could have a buff here and there to have a more notorious niche in tPvP. If only their massive CC potential was as viable in the current meta or if they weren’t getting overshadowed by Mesmers and Thieves on damage and utility this much…

When the current overpowered professions/builds (fu Mesmers) get tonned down, it’s evidently going to be a buff for everyone else.

Kita.7819:

They will keep spamming this skill, and since the channeling is so huge, their initiative recovery almost makes up for the usage. Almost.

Apart from this, they steal an egg from sharks. The egg gives them a full inititive bar. That’s why you see them spamming Shadow Assault so much.

Although this is, yet, another balance problem related to the spammy nature of the initiative system; if you give thives spammable strong skills such as finisher hard hitting skills, stun skills, chain blind skills, stealth+daze combos that are potentially able to be casted several times in a row… achieving an expected and tolerable balance will be extremely hard to do.
Instead of tweaking something inherently problematic, deal with the problems from the roots of it, I say.
(hint: I’m talking about the Initiative mechanic)

I wanted to chime in and say be careful when buffing Ele’s main hand dagger, dagger/dagger is a very solid skill set in the right hands right now. But Scepter main hand, not so much…

The nerfs were very minor in the overall scheme of things (PvP related) with little to no actual impact in some cases. There’s more to come. Slow, paced and well thought out little changes at a time is the smartest thing to do to avoid creating a mass negative reaction among the player base and, of course, to see how the meta slowly progresses.

Again, there’s more to come, specially for you Mesmers.

It took me 2 minutes to get used to the new greatsword layout, but well it took me 10 to get used to play en Ele properly, so I’m not like others I guess.

I don’t see it as such a big deal considering Leap of Faith’s CD reduction, a decent leap + leap finisher + Aoe blind is invaluable. This is a team game, there are lots of other combo fields other than our own.

We have the same problem as JohnnySupernova, we’ve been having pretty annoying lag spikes and freeze lags for two days now, we’ve been geting dissconected ramdomly as well (constant error=7). We’ve checked the ISP, we’ve done all proceedings to get this fixed on our part, but it seems is not us the problem.

We are from Spain (playing on Baruch Bay server), this is UTTERLY UNPLAYABLE right now, it’s been like this for two days now.

10 to 20 seconds long freeze lags, random dissconects, and lag… a LOT of lag. A “we are woking on this” announcement even if obvious, is always mandatory, where is it?

JonathanSharp.7094:

Oh ya, wanted to add: yes, we’re watching Mesmers, bunker Guardians and tank heal Ele’s. Forgot to add that.

Another one here, you made my day!
Don’t forget Thieves, they are pretty rampant in tournaments right now, and that’s for a reason.

Teknobug.3782:

Necros ARE UP, the dagger is the only good high damage weapon, besides the staff which isn’t such a great choice in the fast paced s/tpvp. But the dagger has its own issues as well, I rarely use the dagger mainhand because I don’t like getting close to hard hitters. But come on, only 2800 damage hit? My scepter will hit harder than that if I can manage to throw 5 or 6 conditions on you because scepter #3 gains 8% damage per condition (which never happens). You’re going to get hit harder than that from thieves and warriors.

You said dagger is the only one hard hitting weapon like if you had that many other options. If anything let’s buff the Axe, but an underwhelming weapon doesn’t make for the whole profession being underpowered, far from it. Also, Staff, not a great choise for s/tPvP?… Is by far the most used weapon set, viable for condi and power based builds alike. I think we both agree Scepter is good.

EDIT:

I run a power necro with dagger/warhorn and axe/focus and the damage has indeed increased because of the recent fixes and the change in BiP.
…

We need to see more of these Necros!

sami.3801:

Tanky elementalists are GOD MODE. Do you really want more?

And of course, less of these Eles.

Ayestes, I’m more scared of power Dagger necromancers now than glass cannon thieves/mesmers. Those guys absolutely destroy my tanky Guardian in melee, I can’t even imagine on someone else less tanky than me (pretty much everyone else).

I kind of agree Lumines, but I’m afraid everything gets overshadowed by Mesmers right now. :/

I know that first hand Kaim, I usually go full condi removal on my Guardian, and even then Necromancers smoke me like nothing, I wont complain, I consider them a fair counter, and when Purging Flames gets fixed I wont have that many problems either.

The exageration on elementalists it’s pretty off the charts, I consider that profession pretty decent if played well and requires a much higher level of skill than Necromancers (not according to some dev. whom I dissagree with).

Mesmers that use Moa usually go full glass cannon (there’s no such thing as a glass Mesmer, so let’s say high power), play defensively until they have the phantasms up and once your life goes low enough, Moa>Illusionary leap>Blurred Frenzy and maybe Mind Blast and you WILL go down. If anything Moa is too effective as a kill assist (even worse with help from a team mate), while it should ony be used to take someone out of the fight (and even then it’s a little too long for how fast people usually die in this game), it’s just too effective while used offensively.

To those saying “I haven’t died while in Moa in a while” Do you even play tournies?

I propose the next, you recieve half damage while in moa, duration shortned to 8 seconds.

I’m surprised almost everyone is claming these two professions are underperforming right now. If anything they may lack options.

Yesterday and today I’ve been encountering some Necromancers (in pugs AND Tournies) wielding main Hand dagger that were literally autoattacking to death my 2800+ armor almost 100% protection uptime 21k HP Guardian. The thing is as I’m a UI junkie so I usually almost instantly know when someone’s running glass cannon, when I have my buffs up or down, etc. Well… these Necros were running all pretty low armor (around ~1900/2000), but were extremely hard to kill. I know that becouse precasting empower (12 stacks), 3 stacks of might on weapon switch, 3 stacks activating VoJ and 3 more blasting on Purging Flames and reach 21 stacks of might and I usually kill glassies in seconds with my hammer (except Mesmers, of course). Sadly, I don’t have screenshots of the afterdeath damage data, but I recall seeing around Necrotic Slash 4 hits (~5700 damage), Necrotic Stab 4 hits (~5700 dmg.), Necrotic Bite 4 hits (~5700 dmg.), Life Siphon (~2700/3000 dmg.). I guess the high durability comes from life leeching, Death Shroud and a 21k+ HP bar?

Also, condition Necromancers are extremely strong period. But this is a known fact I guess. It surprises me not enough people are playing these (and the above mentioned).

Power based Necros feel so much stronger now postpatch, what buffs/fixes did they recieve that could have possibly made them that much stronger (in survivavility specially)? or is just pure nonsensical anecdotal evidence on my part?
I’m not nerfcalling, I’m just saying Necros have so much potential.

I’m starting to see LOTS more Elementalists in tournies, and not those utterly unkillable Staff Cantrip healing power eles, but power based ones, ones that manage to be REALLY hard to kill and do a lot more damage than one may expect. People is starting to get more skilled and is starting to discover high durability high damage builds that actually work.

These two professions may lack certain build options, but I wouldn’t consider them weak by any means which is the perception I’ve been having reading these forums.

Krulz.6245:

Too bad Pure of Voice was not addressed =/

I’m really sad it wans’t fixed either as it’s a mandatory triat in my main build.
And even then… it’s a MAJOR trait! darn it!

Also, I can confirm the Renewed Focus underwater aftercast WASN’T fixed.

Purging flames only removes ONE condition on cast, and it should work like Mesmer’s Null Field (removing conditions over time) . Maybe it’s me but the wording is not clear enough.

kyokara.1867:

Guys please stop saying warrior I don’t want my class to become fotm again
Everyone roll ele and don’t put anything into toughness or vit

I’d say Warrior. It’s the most solid profession right now. In terms of (few) bugs, playstyles, solid weapons, utilities and elites, and pretty amazing little inner sinergies with traits. It’s a solid PvP profession as well, you definetly see Warriors in top teams, it has a decent skill cap. This is subjective, but it’s an overall amazingly fun profession. You can’t go wrong with this one.

Ynna.8769:

Rainshine.5493:

I’ve used Line of Warding a lot too in both PvE and WvW, and that has its uses … I’d prefer it be insta-cast and non ground targetable if there has to be a choice between the two, though.

It used to be like that in one of the Beta weekends. Trust me, the way it is now is better.

It was never insta cast and I’ve been playing this since press beta, the only change made to Line of Warding is that it was made ground targetable. Which was a massive buff to the skill by the way, I agree there. I even think it’s a little too strong with 1200 range.

Also, just increase Wave of Wrath’s range, reduce the cone, make it hit less people and increase damage (Z axis too plz). Add AoE blind to Orb of Light’s detonation. Allow Empower to be used on the move and increase the uptime of the Might stacks. And be done with it!

Hey Exedore, you may wanna check this thread I made a while ago: https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/professions/guardian/Concerned-and-dissapointed-with-the-Staff/first#post139700

There is all I have to say about the Staff, but in short, I pretty much agree with you.

Cerise.9045:

5v5

1-2. Guardian, Mesmer
3-5. Elementalist, Engineer, Thief
6-8. Ranger, Necro, Warrior

Woah! I was gonna post exactly this! You all seem to be ranking Elementalists really low, but support, cantrip, healing power Staff Elementalists that really know how to play well are virtually unkillable unless heavily focused. There are other strong Ele builds too.

If what you’re saying is true Kinjiru, they seriously broke the minigame. That’s pretty sad. :/

Oh, don’t get me wrong, I play a guardian with overpowered survivavility, I dont usually have problems with thieves. But those are particular low risk high reward build examples. And no, not every aspect of Thieves is OP, it’s just that Thieves in particular are played like that due to their spammy nature, so it’s more of a problem in the design of the profession.
Mesmers, on the other hand, are a design abomination, there’s so much wrong with this profession I wouldn’t even know where to start.

Once the nerfs come around…

…Just wait before people start complaining about Bleed thieves spamming LDB+ (OP) caltrops/on dodge and Thieves with Sword/Dagger with mesmer runes spamming daze. Fun times ahead, we will have this Thief plague for a while.

Also, condition (+duration) with confusion stacking Mesmer. Try it.

There’s a long way for this game to be considered mostly balanced or even Esport level.

Lvl 48 Guardian. Rank 30+ sPvP. 7/10.

-1 Poor Elite skills.
-1 Poor range combat capabilities. (change Staff’s Wave of Wrath into a 1200 range attack, allow Empower to be used on the move. Change Scepter’s 1srt attack into a 3 chain hit combo, change Smite into a symbol).
-1 Annoying profession specific bugs.

Just call it “Move it!” as someone else said.

Offtopic:
Also, reduce the CD to 30 seconds and decrease the swiftness duration to 10.
60 seconds or 48 just feels too long of a CD, you can achieve 50% uptime with +20% boon duration and -20% recharge, you could achive the same uptime with 30 seconds CD (24) and 10 seconds duration (12), but being able to use it twice as often.

I can’t believe people is actually defending the craptastic Renewed Focus. Unless you heavily trait into Virtues (and not even then mind you), it actually applies a self CC/root. A brief regen, prot or blind wont change the course of the battle like other elites do, not even close. Come on guys, just admit you use this elite skill as a panic button to avoid dieing or to try to prolong the most likely inevitable death, just like you would with any other common defensive oriented UTILITY skill.

Add a stun breaker and allow movement (and maybe increase the invulnerability uptime).

Offtopic, but I’m more concerned about Tome’s massive nerf, these no longer have stability. Precasting Stand Your Ground! with +20% boon duration before a Light of Deliverance is almost a must in tPvP right now. Also, Stand Your Ground! is just too good.

You obviously have you way of thinking the Hammer CONNOT possibly be improved as it’s already very powerful and with ‘supreme’ sinergies (albeit a pretty narrow view of the matter). This is just becoming to be subjective, there’re people like you, who like it and opt with a conformist attitude towards what they see as a competent and powerful weapon and then there’re people like me who see an effective and powerful weapon that could have an improvement in the fun factor without altering the effective factor, you are the one that doesn’t seem to grasp this (my appologies if you do, you don’t seem to make it clear to me).
You said according to your prejudice, most people don’t like it becouse it’s difficult to land the last chain hit, as did I claiming it’s just plain not fun or it just feels slow, plain and simple (according to MANY posters, as well). I respect you like it slow, don’t get me wrong.
I personally don’t reclaim ever saying I don’t like it becouse it’s difficult to hit nor I’ve ever claimed there are no “rotations” whatsoever, by the way.

1. Why shouldnt casting time on skill one be reduced?
Easy, grab 2h mastery and skill one and two are almost seemless and on every symbol you put up, you can finsih it with a blast from skill 2.
If you reduce the casting time on skill one with just a couple of tenths of a second the symbol will disapear before you have skill 2 off cd.

This would mean that you only perform one combofinisher every 2nd chain you perform instead of every chain. Shortening castingtime is a huge nerf, not a buff.

You could have just said that, with the first part being something we actually don’t care about, and describing the hammer, which we already know how it works.

Having to do a Blast EVERY single time you place the symbol instead of every second cooldown finish on Mighty Blow does not compare to what people is actually concerned about, having to wait forever to see that 3rd chain finish is NOT fun (I can’t put enough emphasis in not).
Honestly, you mostly tell us how we should use the hammer, when in practice you wont be doing: three hit chain+Mighty Blow+three hit chain+Mighty Blow; you will be dodging, you will be weapon swaping, you will be using utility skills, the other skills on the weapon set, etc. This is not WoW where you have your specific optimal dps rotation in every engagement (or a brief AoE retaliation buff in this case). Also, not everyone’s going to be using the Two Handed Mastery trait.
And seriously, you seem to be calling OP or UD to stuff where durations and numbers can be easily changed (to acomodate to a more fluid and faster chain in this case) from a development perspective.

tclark.8956:

Keldrath.4735:

I just don’t like it because it’s too support, and the supports kinda meh as well. Sure those few seconds of might stacks is great for everyone around, me, but it’s not like I can swap to greatsword and get some damage off with it, it’s falling off me too fast.

A lot of people bring up it’s great support and say that it’s fine because of that, but I’m sorry it’s not fine. That line of thinking right there is a prime example of the “standard mmo” model of thinking that people still need to break out of. This is a game of being capable to do all roles at one time to varying degrees, not doing one role to the exclusion of all others…

The only thing the staff is currently good for is hitting people through gates and buffing groups with might for a couple seconds just before a big zerg hit, then you weapon swap and don’t look back.

The weapon needs work.

It’s supposed to be support. The entire idea of support isn’t just to buff yourself to be able to solo anything, it’s to enhance the group of people you’re with; and the staff is perfect for this. So you can’t get any damage off with it; so what? I just don’t see why that’s a problem.

It is fine. And it’s not that line of thinking that’s a problem from past MMO’s, I’d argue it’s the idea that it needs to do DPS instead. This isn’t a game where it’s stupid to bring anything other than more DPS because your tank and healer are already maintaining the fight and just need the mob downed.

It’s not a major deterrent if one weapon isn’t a DPS weapon when you can switch any time you want on the fly to something that is. You aren’t locking yourself into one role, because you have two weapons and can fulfill completely different roles on the fly, as needed, multiple times throughout the same fight. The versatility is in the classes and what’s available on their weapon switches rather than making each weapon independently powerful so that weapon switching is just a matter of taste.

It’s not a matter of being a DPS weapon or not, and in that case, why is it the only weapon in the game that you use for the support and then impatiently wait the 10 seconds CD on weapon swap to get back to a more competitive set damage-wise?
ALL weapons are independently powerful, accomplish their own roles AND do respectable damage, except this one (I’ve checked any other weapon set in the game, so we can argue about this one if you want). Also, apart from Wave of Wrath that does justified low damage (as I said in my post) by how the skill works (even though I think is an extremely poor skill), the other supposedly damaging skills are just poorly designed to do much of the intended damage.

Many people here just focus on the 4 seconds static boring channeled skill, the swiftness boon and Line of Wording, so if that makes it AN INCREDIBLY AWESOME SUPER FUN support weapon, the other skills might as well be subpar in damage (or means to apply the damage), or even no sense in the design (Orb of Light detonation), so that’s justified in itself. Right?

Apraxas.3685:

Khenzy.9348:

Sometimes the Swiftness Boon on Symbol of Swiftness is not applied properly when you step through the symbol.

Enemy players can usually pass Line of Warding or Ring of Warding by dodging or just passing by without stability.

In rare occasions Orb of Light is shoot to a random direction instead of where the enemy actually is, this may be caused due to a bugged target assist. If, while in combat, you try to cast this skill without facing the enemy the skill does nothing and gets on CD for one second, the skill should be shot where you’re facing if you want a clutch heal for example.

Yes actually i forgot to add that horrible symbol of swiftness bug to the list, its supper annoying, thank you for reminding me.

About the Orb of light thing im pretty sure its because its colliding with the terrain.
Ive used it a lot on pve and if you are somewhat aiming Towars the floor, like pretty much everybody does, the ball hits the ground really fast and you cant detonate it. you need to purposefully aim your camera way up to get the projectile fly more so you can detonate it.

If you are IN combat, not facing the enemy and you cast Orb of Light to said enemy you have a target on, it gets automatically interrupted and not casted at all. Try it out in the mists.

Also concerning the random deselection of traits in the mists, it seems to be pretty random now, the trait Feiry Wrath also got deselected yesterday. I was asking myself why I felt significantly weaker when doing some PvP and it was becouse half of my traits were not selected.

Edit: I’ve found another one. This always happens but only while underwater. Right after the duration of Renewed Focus ends, you’re rooted in place unable to do anything for one or two seconds (while you recieve full damage from enemies). This is specially troublesome in Raid of the Capricorn sPvP map.

Ben.3760:

Khenzy.9348:

They can only have ONE phantasm up at a time. And EVEN then, phantasm damage reduced. This is how strong they are at the moment.

? What?

We can have 3 phantasms up at any given time.

It’s a suggestion, not an affirmation. But I’ll edit for those like you.

My suggestion:
Mesmer now can only have ONE phantasm up at a time. And EVEN then, phantasm damage reduced.

This is how strong they are at the moment.

Keldrath.4735:

I just don’t like it because it’s too support, and the supports kinda meh as well. Sure those few seconds of might stacks is great for everyone around, me, but it’s not like I can swap to greatsword and get some damage off with it, it’s falling off me too fast.

A lot of people bring up it’s great support and say that it’s fine because of that, but I’m sorry it’s not fine. That line of thinking right there is a prime example of the “standard mmo” model of thinking that people still need to break out of. This is a game of being capable to do all roles at one time to varying degrees, not doing one role to the exclusion of all others…

The only thing the staff is currently good for is hitting people through gates and buffing groups with might for a couple seconds just before a big zerg hit, then you weapon swap and don’t look back.

The weapon needs work.

Why do I spend the time to write a 3 post long wall of text when someone like you comes and explains it so much better in much fewer lines of text? (that’s a compliment btw!).

The traits Signet Mastery in the Radiance line and Supuerior Aria in the Honor lines sometimes do not appear selected, in the Mists at least.

Sometimes the Swiftness Boon on Symbol of Swiftness is not applied properly when you step through the symbol.

Enemy players can usually pass Line of Warding or Ring of Warding by dodging or just passing by without stability.

In rare occasions Orb of Light is shoot to a random direction instead of where the enemy actually is, this may be caused due to a bugged target assist. If, while in combat, you try to cast this skill without facing the enemy the skill does nothing and gets on CD for one second, the skill should be shot where you’re facing if you want a clutch heal for example.

I’ll update if I find more.

I feel the same, I even made a huge post with similar concerns about the staff here.

Brutaly.6257

It was what the hammer needed, not guardian in general. The hammer is fine now, if i get faster animations on banish and the chain it will turn OP. Dps is really nice and cc is great. Im satisfied.

I love the small leap they added to Mighty Blow, it’s actually much more effective to land the MB damage against targets that tend to move a lot in PvP.
With that said, concerning the quote above, who cares if it would make it overpowered or not, this is just from a FUN factor standpoint, if they speed up the chain and it ends up doing too much damage, it’s a matter of changing the numbers, not hard at all. I’m by far not the only one that thinks the main chain feels too slow.

Reihert.1509:

I dont believe staff is living up to it’s expectation. Aside some very situational skills, you are just nerfing your group.

It always break my heart to see guardians wearing staves. They believe their are supporting their team with an increadiable weak healing, with a close to useless might (8 seconds for something you stood still for 4 seconds not doing anything?) or that even more than laughable aoe.

Staff is only when you need to kite/run or line of ward some place.
Grab a 1h/focus and you’ll be far more usefull. That way not only you get 3 free blocks, but get 2 blinding skills, defense against ranged attack and of course, decent dmg.

Want to play a more supportive type? Even a greatsword brings more to the group than a staff. AoE pulls (that if doesnt pull, it at least interrupt), aoe blind and some good aoe.
A single dmg you cast with your GS is a cone aoe, far stronger than your staff.

Thank you for getting it, thank you really. It makes my massive wall of text worth it. The uses of the Staff are unfairly narrowed due to its apparently great support capabilities (are we talking about swiftness and ridiculously short duration might here? and Altruistic Healing just makes Empower an overpowered skill), this doesn’t happen with any other weapon in the game, I already gave some examples.

Also, why do you people keep bringing up Line of Warding (which I said is FINE in my post) and Empower, which I said could be made MORE fun than it is already? I feel some of you didn’t even read my posts at all.

Phantasm Mesmers, Scepter condition Necros, LDB spamming bleed thieves, Pistol+Dagger Venom thieves, Sword+Dagger daze (tactical strike) spam heavy stealth thieves, tanky control Mace+Hammer healling shouts Warrior, perma immobilize rifle net-turret power Engineers, spirit weapon (with hammer spirit) Guardians, Scepter+Focus Stone Shard spamming condition based Elementalists.

Not professions, but specific builds.

How they left Phantasm Mesmers and Thief as a whole in this state on live (for two weeks now and counting) is actually really concerning. You actually don’t need to be new to the game to see these clear unbalances, and with an experienced QA team they should have seen this coming (remember how, in closed Beta, those Cloack and Dagger+Backstab spammers with near perma stealth were quickly fixed?).
People defending this is pretty laughable, but it shouldn’t be, as it happens in every MMO ever.

This is more of a tPvP/sPvP post, but as you could see, I named PvE and WvW as well. I already said Empower has its strong side, I’m just trying to suggest they make that particular skill more fun. Wouldn’t you rather be casting it while having control of your character? Aside from other problems it has that I already named in the main post.

Romanus.8023:

Khenzy.9348:

The problem relies on the design of all of its damaging skills.

Having a hard time getting the full 4 seconds off? Activate “Stand Your Ground!” as soon as you see someone is about to mess with it. Pretty sure the Might improves how much damage Retaliation does.

In short, nothing should be taken in a vacuum. At level 6, with no other weapons or utilities or traits, sure, the staff may not be the best weapon to go solo champion mobs, but my level 80 and my allies around me absolutely love my staff and wouldn’t let me roll without it.

Sorry I haven’t seen your edit there, so I edit your edit, so I edit my post to post the new editted edit.

And sorry again, but you seem to not be getting to point of my post on that particular edit.

Romanus.8023:

Khenzy.9348:

The problem relies on the design of all of its damaging skills.

No, this is the problem right here. The staff is not designed for dps. However, it is absolutely incredible for support, if only for the #4-Empower.

Absolutely no main hand weapon in the game is designed to be as support oriented that neglects its direct or condition damage component almost entirely, or lacks the design to apply said damage, except for this one, of course.
Also, a single, gimmicky boring to perform skill should not make for a poor damaging weapon, unless you are facing up to five+ enemies and spamming 1, you are vastly underperforming. Staying there for 4 seconds every 20, does not make it a good weapon. But I respect your viewpoint, so let’s agree to disagree.

Every single Guardian weapon set should have a Symbol, much like Mesmers have phantasms. So you don’t totally neglect or ignore some of the Zeal and Honor traits that are symbol related. It wouldn’t even be that hard to implement, something like Symbol of Smite on scepter 2 that applies fury/might or some other boon, or you place a symbol where you teleport to with the sword, something like that would create new little sinergies and possibilities with the respective traits.

Also, I agree the Scepter should have a 3 chain combo.

continues here

Proposals to change Orb of Light:
1- Slightly increase its travel speed, it still keeps healing allies it passes through and damage part is kept the same. GREATLY increase the Orb of Light detonation damage, it doesn’t heal anymore, it now blinds enemies (just as it once did) nearby the detonation. The heal as it stands is absolutely craptastic and not worth the detonation, it heals for less than an autoattack damage and that’s pretty stupid for the damage you sacrifice with the CD penalty. Also, you would mitigate A LOT more damage, IN combat, with an AoE blind. Why would you cast this in combat sacificing so much damage for little to no healing? Out of combat? HP regens alone anyways, with a blind it now has a more skill based component (human skill) and more damage mitigation when it matters with a good timed AoE blind. Also, some good long range AoE damage preassure it sorely lacks right now with the detonation.
2- Same as above, except don’t increasing the travel speed and when you detonate it, instead of an AoE blind, it could immobilize for 1 second or apply any kind of slow (cripple/freeze), basically making it an AoE CC ability to make the damage of Symbol of Swiftness not wasted by a dodge 90% of the time.

Proposal to change Symbol of Swiftness (or any symbol for that matter):
Just two small proposals here, either make symbols do initial spike damage (see good damage) on the first tick and do gradually less damage as time passes; or all symbols now have a slow component on the first tick of damage.

Proposal to change Empower: Is now casted while on the move with a gradual heal overtime (that stacks with Altruistic Healing) and the gradual stacking of might is now reduced to fewer stacks but with the duration greatly increased. I think they wanted to avoid the “cast this skill on CD to have have perma Might stacks” with the low duration massive Might stacking at the end of the cast, just make it a much higher duration with lower might stacks. If Might stacking is really the problem just reduce the cast time and allow it to be used on the move and should be fine.

Proposal to change Line of Warding: If the skills are ever changed to 900 range, reduce this one to 900 as well. Fix a bug where some people without stability (or with a simple dodge) can pass through it.

This got a little long! :P

Thanks for reading!

it ends here, for real!

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Then, we have the newely added Empower, and again, it’s poorly designed, from a fun factor point to an effectiveness one. Who here likes to stand still for four seconds waiting for an animation to end? Anyone? Have I been sitting there for fours seconds for a heal and 420 power that last the glorious amount of 8 seconds? Wasn’t there a more fun alternative of allowing this to be casted while on the move, healing more and more the more time you spend casting it while accumulating a longer duration might, or something? I donno, this skill could have been so much better implemented, it feels like rushed or something worse. It’s a skill which has strong gimmiks to it (and has some sinergy with Altruistic Healing), in sPvP is not effective as you shouldn’t stand there in middle of a fight for 4 seconds, and if you precast it, you not only waste the heal most of the time, the Might stacks duration is too low, and… it’s just not a fun skill at all.

I can’t say anything bad about Line of Wording, as this is such an amazing skill and has so many uses whether it being in sPvP, DEs or WvW (maybe even a little too strong with 1200 range). I usually take the Staff for this skill and Symbol of Swifness alone (the swiftness boon, not the damage, of course).

Sugestions:
Some of you may remember Jon Peters saying that the Staff could possibly become a 900 range weapon? If he did such a claim, he sorf of aknowledged something wasn’t entirely right with the weapon. I just hope he didn’t say it just becouse Guardians needed some long range alternatives at the time. Should we increase this or that weapon’s range? Just like that? Who designs like that? If you disagree with me I could explain this point further, but it’s not the point of this post.

We all know by now underwater weapons are designed to be much more all arounded and complete weapons with control, support and damage, that’s becouse we only have two weapon sets available (except a couple of professions). Let’s take a look at the Trident, its skills all make sense in a way that you can do respectable damage with the design of the skills allowing it, you can cast a Pilar of Light into a Weight of Justice with a Purify>Purify Blast Thrown in, it’s not a weapon you take out to clear a bunch of trash mobs occasionally or for the occasional swifness to travel through points/places faster. I know it needs to do damage as its the only alternative long range underwater weapon available, I don’t care about that, but the design, the skills feel well put together, like they have a porpuse together, thay have their own sinergy, just like using a Greatsword to pull people into your whirl of madness or with your hammer trapping people inside the ward or throwing them out of the point and immobilizing them far while you contest.

Proposals to change Wave of Wrath:
1- As I’m pretty sure the devs seem pretty reluctant to entirely change this skill, I propose to increase its range to 900, reduce the cone, greatly increase the damage component, and give it Z axis capability.
2-Make it mimic the skill 1 on the Trident, Light of Judgment, it’s an extremely spammy ball of light that bounces between foes and allies giving a small heal. I know that spammy part, is becouse of the ‘skills are performed faster while underwater philosophy’ to give that feeling of things being faster while underwater, that’s something I don’t care about. What I do care though, is we have a very similar version of this skill on land, it’s the Mesmers Staff 1, Winds of Chaos. It’s the perfect example of how a multi target low damage skill can greatly support and contribute in damage to the rest of the skill set giving fury and might. I propose to change Wave of Wrath into a version of Winds of Chaos or Light of Judgement that bounces between foes applying vulnerability and giving might to allies.

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NOTE: With this “Message Body length must be less than 5001.” I have to do this in three posts.
This is all my personal opinion about this weapon.
I tend to repeat myself through out the post, but that’s the way I post, so stay with me. Also, I usually have a lot of typos.

First let me say the Staff is the most secondary weapon set in the game right now, see that I’m not counting some specific Engineer kits and some other Elementalist attunements. What do I mean by secondary? Well, it’s that set you use to support your main set, where you use the other set to do the damage. The Guardian Staff takes it as a secondary the farthest (in a bad way). You can argue that the Necro Staff could very well be one, the thing is, the Necro Staff can pack enough damage (sustained too!), that’s not what happens with the Guardian one. Well, you can even give an example with any other profession, but the thing is, none of the others have to make a sacrifice in damage or suffer a poor design of the skill set to properly apply that damage.

The problem relies on the design of all of its damaging skills.

The famous/infamous Wave of Wrath is one of the main examples; it’s a medium range (600) cone attack that does negligible damage. The problem is, that terribly low damage is logically explained by how the skill works itself. But what are the uses really? Spamming the cone nonstop on random dinamic event trash mobs? It’s not even useful against mesmers. Good luck spamming 4 autoattacks that will barely scratch the mesmer and EVEN his phantasms while these chew through your health like butter (also, nerf phantasm dmg pl0x). It’s not only that the skill just can’t do reliable damage on a single target, it just feels disjointed with the rest of the skill set being large range (Orb of Light, Symbol of Swiftness and Line of Warding). It’s a plain, boring (this is personal opinion), poor damaging skill that accomplishes mindless dinamic event trash mob killing or thowing out some poor damage into WvW zergs (you are better doing something else honestly) and little else (massively might stacking or being glass cannon to make the damage viable is all kinds of gimmick to make this viable in my opinion), there’s no sinergy with any other skill, no wide uses besides what I described above. It may be fun to others, but I personally think is for the better if this particular skill is changed/rebalanced/removed entirely. I’ll say what changes I’d make later on this post.

There’s another skill that’s supposed to pack the most damage to it, it’s Orb of Light. That slow moving poorly target assited ball of light, that one. Well, again, it’s not an effective and reliable source of damage, and it does not accomplish it’s main purpose, which is doing some respectable damage, obviously. In a higly dynamic and movement oriented enviroment (sPvP/WvW specially), is easily avoidable so it does not enough damage and the Orb of Light detonation may just not be there as it does not enough healing nor damage for the CD penalty.

Yet, the next skill that I think does not accomplish being damaging enough either is Symbol of Swiftness. It’s a relatively very small long ranged AoE that if well placed, will tick twice in a semicompetent enemy. Even the full duration is poor damage and its static damage overtime does not help either (it’s a low damage Lava Font actually). Do I really need to bring an immobilize/slow for this symbol to do enough damage, or even fully trait it (and not even then)? Some people will argue about this one, and it’s perfectly understandable as this symbol provides one of the greatest sources of swiftness in the game, so in a way, if you want this higly supportive skill to do its full damage (albeit poor still) you will have to support it some way.

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