Guild Wars 2

Dristig.9678:

I’m legitimately confused. I thought Guardian was the Go-To tank for Raids? I am trying to gear up one of my characters for tanking and thought Guardian would be the most secure. What is going on?

Guardian would be a good go-to if there was enough damage that tanks had to go somewhat potato. Even then people would probably prefer scrapper. Thing is there isn’t much focused damage on the tank, so the best go-to is something that already has comparatively bad dps but something vitally important to a raid group. See: alacrity-stacking chronomancer.

Obtena.7952:

That’s an interesting stance considering that ALL discussion about changes we don’t even have details about is even more vaporous and contributes even LESS to predicting the state of a Guardian post-patch than simply waiting to see what the result will be and keeping a level headed approach to the changes.

I’m also amused that you continue to equate the reason I suspect Anet making the changes as “because they want to”. Not sure how you get that from “because of the class concept”. That’s certainly not due to anything on my side of the discussion. Maybe you want to continue to diminish that argument because you have no way to dispute it or even believe it’s not true /shrug

Even if you exclude our little side bar here, I don’t see posts in this thread that are all that rational. These aren’t discussions and if they are, I didn’t see you contributing to them in any more of a significant way than you are accusing me of doing.

You haven’t told people to sit tight and wait it out. You’ve told people “you just don’t understand class concept”. And as I told you repeatedly, that “class concept” shtick is humbug. Quite a few of these posts are rational, even if misdirected.

Obtena.7952:

I’m saying they changed it to align to what they want the class to do, though you shouldn’t make it sound like the reason I’ve provided isn’t good enough to consider, since it is the one that actually matters.

Don’t get me wrong, I’m all for people talking about how they dislike change, etc… but when I see people QQing because they assume Anet is making changes that are ‘stupid’ when the reality is that those people just don’t understand things, that’s not an unreasonable place to step in and challenge that thinking by saying “hey, did you ever think ….”

Frankly, since we have hardly any details, it’s pretty presumptuous for anyone to really predict how the next round of balancing changes will affect the class. I get your not liking my line of thinking all that much and you wish what I was saying wasn’t true. Accusing me of not adding to the conversation; that’s weak backhanded attack considering how much time you have decide to spend trying to break me down.

My position is pretty strong in this thread. On top of recognizing there are other reasons to make changes beyond ‘class comparison balance’, there isn’t even enough details released from Anet to have a reasonable discussion about what the change even is in the first place.

The reason you provided doesn’t matter, because it’s something non-debatable. There is no reason to speculate on whether they can change something; the answer is trivial. Only whether they should, or will.

“…those people just don’t understand things…” This is where I have issue, you’re being pretentious. You’ve insinuated something similar in some of your other posts already. This isn’t some grandoise obscure philosophizing with no straight answer, beyond human comprehension; something only you and Anet understand, and people who disagree simply haven’t learned. It’s numbers. You haven’t provided much to think about besides balancing the class without regard to other classes, which I already told you is poppykitten, and that the devs can change anything at any time, which I already said we all (should ) know. Disliking change is QQing. What isn’t QQing is calling out a change that you think is stupid, and explaining why (as long as you aren’t solely doing so out of emotion, that is). You’ve got things twisted. It’s presumptuous to try and tell people what they can and can’t speculate, you can only tell them why the speculation is probably wrong or right. We could get 100% damage buffs on everything or we could get 50% nerfs, anything’s possible, doesn’t make it probable; they gave us this preview to see what direction they plan on going.

“…you wish what I was saying wasn’t true.” that implies I think you’re correct but don’t want to accept it. I simply don’t think you’re correct besides Anet-fiat, which again, everyone knows about. I certainly don’t consider my comment backhanded, I consider it fairly straightforward. All your talk of “class concept” and “Anet dev’s vision” is vaporous. It doesn’t contribute to predicting the state of the guardian post-patch. It doesn’t kitten the numeric or stylistic validity of the changes they hinted and revealed. It doesn’t attempt to explain why the speculated changes are occurring beyond “because they can”. You’ve been saying mostly the same things repeatedly. I’m not trying to break you down, only your argument.

Obtena.7952:

I can actually, because they said it. It’s irrelevant if I think it is or is not too bursty; I don’t define the class concept, Anet does.

http://dulfy.net/2016/01/11/gw2-profession-balance-goals-for-winter-2016/

Then you are saying they just changed it because they felt like it, and you have no reasoning beyond that. You haven’t added anything to this conversation beyond “anet reserves the right to change their game how they want”, and everyone here should have already known that. Being too bursty doesn’t make the class fail to fit the concept of bursty, class concept is an umbrella. Being too good at something under the umbrella isn’t outside of concept, it’s just unbalanced. I think what you mean is Anet’s vision of the class. Just because they’re at the wheel doesn’t mean they’ll make the correct turns. There are three choices for us in the passenger seat when we think they’ll turn wrong: say nothing and wait until after a mistake is made, start saying something about what we think the right way to go is, or panic preemptively and bail out before the intersection. People on the forums (mostly) fall into the second category. It doesn’t matter if they don’t listen, we’re still gonna talk about it.

Obtena.7952:

No offense, but I’m going to say Anet controls the concept of the class and what it does, not players. Besides that, Anet didn’t say it shouldn’t be bursty or disruptive at all, they just said it was TOO bursty and disruptive for them.

You can’t just say the devs think it’s too bursty and that’s that. This is a forum, I’m here to question and criticize. What basis do they have for thinking it’s too bursty? You don’t appear to have the answer, but you keep insisting. As I already told you, anything that isn’t a complete potato is too bursty compared to base guardian alone (your proposed basis for tweaks). And compared to other classes (as you say they don’t) it certainly isn’t too bursty at all for the survivability it has (marauder scrapper says HELLO). If you’re going to say Anet just made the change because they felt like it with no rhyme or reason, just say it. It’s their prerogative.

Obtena.7952:

I agree with that for sure, though subjective here is irrelevant since it’s Anet’s subjectivity and they hold the levers. I for one would love to see some things happen on Guardian, but I know it won’t because of the class concept. That’s OK too because there are 8 other classes than cover these cool things I would like to play.

We shouldn’t be in denial that changes happens because of class concept though and not for bad reasons either; staying true to a concept preserves the feel of the class, which matter as much as or more than interclass balancing.

Healing ahnk on a shield, chrono/druid/herald can provide better group survivability, support, and healing. Our class concept is done better by other classes, so clearly they don’t care that much about adherence to the ideas.

Obtena.7952:

Change is being made because Anet thinks DH is too bursty and disruptive; so sounds to me like the reason is alignment to class concept. Unfortunately, when people see changes they think are bad, they immediately assume they are based on balances relative to other professions. This is a kittenumption.

Overall performance can be assessed simply by past experience ingame within the class itself, under the reasonable assumption that the class is based around a concept. No reference to other classes is required in that kind of assessment. That makes a massive amount of sense if you don’t assume that balance is always relative to other classes.

Alright, then you need to understand: the class concept of the Dragonhunter is supposed to be burst and disruption so of course it’s going to have high burst and disruption relative the base class with reportedly the 2nd worst dps in the game and limited CC. Elite specs are supposed to alter the playstyle of a class enough that it warrants a different symbol (the little arrowhead instead of a healing ahnk on a shield), so it’s effectively meant to behave like a different class (more damage less support). Balancing a single class based on feel without comparison to other classes is like allocating fuel for a plane by getting a pilot who’s flown a plane, but knows nothing about the one in question, to guess how much it needs without gauges. You can’t measure the distance between two objects (guard and DH) without a third object as reference (any other class in the game). Balancing without comparison to other classes makes no sense in any context. It isn’t balance.

InsidiousWaffle.7086:

I mean, none of these are bad… at all. Trap dazes were all brought in line, test of faith’s initial damage was slightly nerfed, but that just encourages you to use your traps carefully, and plan/play with them instead of fireing and forgetting.

I mean, they left true shot alone, and we got buffed in regards to condi clear and rez speed, which helps guard fill the role of combat support.

QQ some more tho, maybe acting like children will make us godmode

Edit: Changed “teat of faith” to “Test of Faith” for obv reasons

To be fair this thread has far less QQ than many I’ve seen, and most here aren’t asking for godmode. The issue is that Anet is nerfing (even if slightly) an elite spec that performs mediocre at best compared to others, and buffing things that were already good when they said they’d buff less-used options. As far as I can tell, protective reviver was already a meta trait for bunker guard in pvp and frontliner in wvw, and medis were always meta for pvp power or wvw roaming builds. It isn’t bad that they’re getting better, but leads to wonder if they’re what Anet thought were “less used”.

Kam.4092:

…

Why Friday?

Probably hoping for more balance previews on the next “Guild Chat” stream.

Obtena.7952:

King Cephalopod.7942:

Obtena.7952:

Just another example of why you don’t understand why this change is being made…..You’re expectations don’t align with theirs.

…

Overall performance of a class, even relative to others, is not determined by changing a very small number of its skills…

Alright, let’s focus on some disagreements. If I don’t understand why this change is being made, explain to me why this change is being made, and what Anet’s expectations are relative to mine. And please elaborate the “even” there. What is the overall performance of a class without relativity to others, in a game where multiple classes exist to choose from?

Obtena.7952:

Just another example of why you don’t understand why this change is being made. You can cite all the examples of DH getting ROFLstomped you like; it doesn’t really matter because that’s not why Anet is changing stuff. Anet has no aspirations to see DH hit some specific level of PVP performance with respect to other professions. You’re expectations don’t align with theirs.

What do you mean by that? Balance doesn’t exist in a vacuum. The only way DH can be too strong in terms of burst/disruption is in comparison to the other builds/classes available. So any changes they make are by comparison, and are about making the classes hit a specific level of performance. And most of their performance balance is based around PvP.

Thaddeus.4891:

King Cephalopod.7942:

I have to disagree somewhat. The fact that they needed one ranged guardian with magi’s and one melee guardian with clerics to cover healing indicates that guardian can’t cover healing unless it’s a duo of healers.

He didn’t said that Guardian were the best at everyrole, only that they were able to fill any role. They was only guardian in that video, so clearly Guardian can fill most role, maybe badly, but they do. Don’t how much profession can say the same.

And the Cleric Guardian in melee was also the tank.

But what I’m saying is that guardian can’t really fill the role properly, when the standard is 1 slot for healer. If your healer drops, you can’t just PM a guard substitute “roll magis get here”. You’d need someone else in the party to also run healing for either the melee or the ranged group. And since every hammerhunter in that group ran writ of persistence, that’s ~100 extra hps per head melee on top of permaprot.

Nike.2631:

…. a Guardian can deliver every single tool that fight calls for. Heals, tanking, CC, Power DPS, Condi DPS, & pushes. All. Of. It….

I have to disagree somewhat. The fact that they needed one ranged guardian with magi’s and one melee guardian with clerics to cover healing indicates that guardian can’t cover healing unless it’s a duo of healers.

Glorious!
/15charmeta

Yeah, the fact that they looked at herald and said “boonspam” as if there wasn’t already a class that’s supposed to be built around giving boons is rather unsettling.

Obtena.7952:

Buran.3796:

You see? The way Arenanet “solves” problems of balance isn’t trying to figure a way to keep some pairity between classes or ofering alternative viable builds for each class; but instead REMOVING things..

Funny you keep trying to make this sound like a bad thing. It doesn’t make sense to you that if they want less sustain, they remove items that give you lots of sustain?

It’s one thing to remove the tanky sets that were released later in the games life (shoutouts to the few days minstrels made it in pvp even though they pulled nomads), but if I’m not mistaken soldier’s has existed since launch. Maybe I’m just a stick in the mud, but if they can’t balance around the stat combinations that existed on release maybe they should re-think some classes’ durability?

Arnath I agree on the underwhelming nature of what they decided would be good enough to deserve a highlight on stream, but guardian isn’t the most hated. The problem isn’t disdain, just that they think we’re “in a good spot”. Because of that I think they see fit to ignore the problems with the class because what the class did well (used to, at least) worked. And that’s medis and shouts. And they’re buffing a medi as a solution to an underlying weakness to the class when condis are strong: tiny health pool and not enough cleanse on things that aren’t medis or shouts. No consecration that offers resistance, one offering 3 cleanses and some reduced duration on a 35 second cooldown in a small area (with no boons for AH synergy), healing signet only cleanses once per 8 seconds when traited, no condi cleanse on signet activation when traited. Only one spirit weapon offers a boon, and I’m not even sure how well the bow does for conditions, but the cooldown is rather prohibitive.
Aeolus I think it would be better if DH kept the removal on block, but another trait tree got “aegis applied by you removes a condition when broken”. As long as aegis is our thing now, might as well try to go all-in, even with all these unblockables floating around.

River Strider.9860:

I was going to say that I hope they do more changes. Was gong to say “that is all?”

They said it’s a preview and there are more changes yet unspoken. Just have to wait 11 days.

mrauls.6519:

Maxodon.5243:

King Cephalopod.7942:

Mesmer got alacrity halved but got some more aegis.

The aegis thing is actually a nerf since they swapped 1 second of aoe invulnerability with 3s of aegis and Mesmer doesn’t have any aegis traits to improve that

Id rather have to go through aegis than worry about them being invul…

My intent was poorly phrased. It is a nerf, but when aegis is what we have left as a semi-unique support contribution and they give more to mesmer I get a sour taste in my mouth.

Mesmer got alacrity halved but got some more aegis. Ranger got 1200 range shouts, and “protect me” has group stunbreak like guardian F3 traited. Necro can corrupt boons even more. Thief has group unblockables. Berzerker is supposed to be the king of burning. I really hope they left a lot of guardian stuff out. I bet some friends when they first announced this that we’d get buffs to either shouts or medis, and now I’m really sad that I was right.

sasoriaka.6348:

….
All the other classes are getting some nerfs to their survability.
Imagine the state of the actual DH if ANet doesn’t nerf the burst a lil’ bit? It’s gonna dominate everything….
On the PvE matter, it WILL hurt the class. But then again, who cares about PvE?

No, not all. Not in the slightest. Scrapper may get survivability nerfs, but they’re already superbruisers. According to the post, reaper’s staying strong. Chrono loses some utility. Tempest may lose some survivability, but they’re getting weapon tweaks and offensive buffs to compensate. And PvP is nice, but most players spend most of their time in PvE. Given the release of raids, instanced PvE is also seeming to become a bigger focus for endgame challenge. PvE viability matters.

I mean, I’m still hopeful for sword tweaks, but I’m also doubtful considering in many classes they mentioned specific weapons they planned to modify. And to be fair Lazeris, the class symbol of the guardian is a healing ahnk on a shield so it’s a little weird that the class isn’t passable as a healer or healing tank.

But still no word on sword tweaks. GGs

Mace should be a support/defensive weapon, not condi (healer viability someday?). Sword could work, but is mobility focused and the hidden powerful blades trait conflicts with the torch trait. Scepter seems like it would fit the bill for proc-ing justice passive but for the slow projectile.

Xhyros.1340:

King Cephalopod.7942:

Xhyros.1340:

You won’t need fire fields when you get 5 guardians autoing providing 5 stacks of might each XD.

Not gonna lie, there’s a part of me that deeply wants 10-guardian hammerway to be a thing. But hammer AA doesn’t have much on real damage rotations.

Before HoT, I believe just using hammer auto was 2nd to guardian’s best rotation between GS and Sw/F. Though LB throws that out the window. Luckily though, Procession of Blades fits quite well inbetween hammer 2 and 3 (and the blades seem to start spinning right exactly when the symbol appears, it’s wonderful), so it’s not JUST autoattacking now; you gotta fit in Spear of Justice, FMW, and PoB so at least it’s not as stupidly mindless as Herald’s “rotation”.

If I remember right the dps graphs showed hammer championing out over extended periods of time (not burst). Any idea how a DH hammer rotation would stack against other classes? Still afraid it would be negligible in comparison.

Edit: Sometimes it’s not about effectiveness. It’s about style. The dream.

You keep editing your post about 5 minutes after you post them. I’d appreciate it if you’d stop and take the time to write what you actually mean the first time. Guardian has little burst compared to other classes, so that shouldn’t be surprising. What you said before, that burst seemed too high as reinforced by the openworld success, is quite different from what you say now. It still doesn’t really justify nerfs in that department.

Obtena.7952:

The fact remains that the big step in OW PVE performance that DH has on Guardian is indicative of the massive bursty nature that it has received, reinforcing my point that *I think it’s too much.*

You might not have suggested it, but your phrasing implies you take open world performance into account when considering the validity of changes to class mechanics, regardless of whether you actually do.
As for the burst, it’s alright in fractals, but not gamebreaking or better than other classes. It doesn’t matter in open world. In raids it’s rather bad. In WvW it may be good for solo/small group roaming, but revenant hammer 2 and aoe’s take the cake for zerg backlines. In pvp no pro’s really use DH at all. So when they say burst and disruption is what they’ll focus on it’s concerning as I believe it somewhat unwarranted.

Obtena.7952:

The fact remains that the big step in OW PVE performance that DH has on Guardian is indicative of the massive bursty nature that it has received, reinforcing my point that I think it’s too much.

Balancing around open world pve is like trying to determine the max load of a freight elevator by putting a single feather on it and measuring the stress. It’s nonsense.

Xhyros.1340:

You won’t need fire fields when you get 5 guardians autoing providing 5 stacks of might each XD.

Not gonna lie, there’s a part of me that deeply wants 10-guardian hammerway to be a thing. But hammer AA doesn’t have much on real damage rotations.

Obtena.7952:

Running around naked would not qualify as an ‘excellent PVE openworld’ build, just because you can do it. Despite how little you think it matters, there is actually ways to play and build classes to excel at OW content, just like any other PVE content in any other game and DH does that in a significant way over Guardian right now. in fact, Guardian already ranked highly as an OW PVE class before HoT.

From my interpretation, Anet is not going to take away the trick. That’s not what balancing is about. They didn’t say alot of things … do we just jump to conclusions those things thy didn’t say aren’t going to happen? Are we Donald Rumsfeld? Frankly, they didn’t say enough for anyone to conclude anything other than changes to ‘stuff’ that are ‘bursty and disruptive’. People just reading into and concluding things to with the tactics that complaining loudly gets them things they want. It doesn’t work that way people.

What I was saying is you don’t really need ranks for open world PvE. It’s faceroll. Saying DH is high rank at openworld is like saying a mouse is high rank at clicking on the Window’s start button. Yeah, one might feel better, but as long as it’s a mouse it can do the job easy.
The point of a news release of a sneak peek like this is to show us (the players) the main facets they’re implementing. If it’s big enough to make a noticeable difference it’ll probably at least get a footnote (see: warrior sustain; specific weapon reworks; base guard trait tinkering). The lack of buff to non-burst/disrupt portions of DH is, as the saying goes, “conspicuous by its absence” in light of the rather explicit intent to nerf those aspects.

Xhyros.1340:

Why would mace have a strong auto, it’s slow as heck. It may seem strong because of how big the third hit looks, but it’s weaker than GS autos. By a lot. And NO GS in this game has good autoattack chain damage, they’re all about burst. It’s hammer. Hammer is only very slightly behind Revenant sword at the moment. Guardian hammer auto does about 99.3% of the damage Revenant sword auto does (against single targets), although it’s less stable and obviously is horrible against targets that run around.

Yeah, but that’s because the AA has an aoe tacked on and a huge cast time on chain 3 to compensate. Also everything else it does is a little wonky. 3 gets caught on terrain, not a long immobilize and a long startup. 5 makes you stand still. 4 huge cast time low damage. 2 has okay damage and is a blast finisher (good). All the damage is frontloaded on 1, because nothing else is a damage skill (2 is more for the blast than the damage, well, post JI synergy nerf). And the thing about hammer is the light fields are really obnoxious when trying to make synergy with the blast.

Obtena.7952:

That’s a fair CONCERN. In fact, it’s a concern of anyone that ANY balance patch is going to screw something up. The problem with this thread, as any other pre-balance QQ is that it hasn’t happened yet.

I for one think that the DH is TOO focused on burst and disruption; it’s a one-trick pony for PVP and excels in PVE openworld.

Unfortunately, this results in not all that useful in the actual challenging encounters in PVE and much too predictable in PVP. Ironically, some narrowminded people who want more use from their Guardians in PVE are complaining about changing the very thing that can fix this problem. ><

Of course I and everyone on this forum will voice our concerns. It’s a FORUM, a place to discuss topics and that includes concerns based on the information at hand. What are you talking about “excels in PvE openworld”? I run around naked in cursed shore on most of my classes. I run around the expansion maps on base warrior and guardian with purposefully unoptimal traits and skills sometimes. PvE openworld doesn’t really matter. Most all of it is a blobfest or a faceroll. And making the class weaker doesn’t fix the problem. They didn’t say they’d give the DH more options, they said they thought it was too good at what it does, which is why the people here are concerned. What happens when a one-trick pony gets that trick taken away?

Obtena.7952:

The problem here is that you don’t get that Anet have concepts they want the classes to follow and some of those changes they are talking about are because of straying from the concepts, not because of OP or MEH. If you actually look at the history of balance patches, many of the changes actually occur because of class concept vs. relative strength of effects. GW2 is no different.

I’m glad you want to talk concepts, concepts are my specialty. The concept of DH is a selfish backline damage dealer with limited support (relative regular guard), and traps to improve damage and survivability at close-range. It does its job decently, mainly by concentrated bursts, a large part of which is due to the daze on traps and dragon’s maw’s ward. So when they say “DH is too good at burst and disruption”, it’s very concerning since those are the two pillars the spec appears to be built on, and the spec seems mediocre overall. Unless they give a big buff to sustained damage and mobility, I don’t see this ending well.

Obtena.7952:

Right, and that in your opinion is a Guardian class problem? So, for example, Chronomancer Alacrity abilities … is a Guardian class problem? That’s an interesting perspective you got there. Maybe I’m just old school but that doesn’t make sense because nothing you can give Guardians addresses ANY of those OPed Elite spec’s … unless you’re unrealistically suggesting Guardians get OP’ed elite spec’s, but you’re not one of THOSE people are you?

The problem with the way you think is that it’s not unique or new; we have all seen this behaviour before, yet when balance is patched, the anticipated Armageddon never comes. You’re just Crying Wolf to confirm your own dissatisfaction for the class and it’s perceived lack of whatever. That’s not real.

“People want balance and then when they read what needs to happen to get it, it’s like the end of the world for them.” -You in your first post in this thread, specifically about DH nerfs.
Don’t act so smug and pretentious. DH was one of the more middling elite specs in terms of strength. Some of the very powerful elite specs aren’t getting any nerfs in this change according to what the post said (reapers, scrapper maybe). Don’t try to justify DH nerfs and then backpedal and make it look like the people doubting the validity of said nerfs are actually asking for their class to be broken on par with the current top dogs. The lack of OP is not what they didn’t like. They didn’t like that Anet is nerfing something that falls under the category of “okay, I guess…” in the rankings. And that is a Guardian problem. The problem that most elite specs were OP as kitten, some get nerfed. DH was ‘meh’, but is also looking at nerfs.

Thornwolf.9721:

King Cephalopod.7942:

Thornwolf.9721:

King Cephalopod.7942:

Thornwolf.9721:

But thats why the warrior should get it, because it is a calmer state of mind. It would make sense that over time a warrior becomes humbled or mellow as he gets stronger, he looses the drive to be angry and begins to grow more collected and wise. Its a perfect spec to fit in with how our character grows throughout the game.

So you could say over time the warrior gains the focus of a monk? Mellow and meditative? Less anger, more valor? So you’re saying warriors should develop into guardians as the story progresses?

Im saying they should gain focus and resolve rather than remain as they are now, still retaining their anger but focusing it into wrath and learning to use that as a catalyst. The monk being a combat class that is more based on beating your enemy to a pulp with “Cold anger” rather than heated destruction. Its pretty much the polar and complete opposite of what the berseker is to us now. It is often said that those with a hot temper are less terrifying then those with cold, calculated hatred. Maybe hatred is the fuel of this spec, the more they hate their enemy the stronger they become.

So, focus like a monk, and resolve: that thing that guardians have on F2? You know, Virtue of Resolve? You really want to bring wrath into this? That’s also a guardian thing. Symbol of wrath, tome of wrath that got turned into “Feel my Wrath!”, a combination of radiance (burning intensity) and zeal (controlled aggression). Guardians do burning, but the fire is a cold blue colour instead of a hot orange. You’re asking for dps guardian.

Ok then leave all of that out then since everyone wants to jump onto “Let it be the kittening guardian” bandwagon. Make the F2 ability simply a dash that concludes with a twenty strike combo that you build up power for. Make it something unrelated to the guardian, make their aura and energy white or something neutral or close to a neutral color. Rather then tell me “No you cant have the warrior become anything cool, no hand to hand combat shame on you”. Offer up ways to kittening improve my idea and show me some contribution, or take your negative notions elsewhere. This is what i want, i feel it would be cool to see and all everyone is doing is kittenting on it. For one you did not obviously read the full thing, otherwise you would of seen its specked to fill any role we need. Tank/heal/dps and the traits were made around being in combat, but no just because i want a martial artist who is not a DD because really its just a thief with a stick everyone is against it. I dont see you coming up with any ideas, why dont you post a thread or post in here about what you want? Why dont we all talk about what we want for our warriors rather than what we cant have. Maybe then the kittening lazy devs will actually do something for us.

White is still a very guardian colour. Much of the radiant stuff is white light, radiant aura, etc. Guardian colours are pretty much white/blue. I’d like hand-to-hand combat with a warrior, but that kind of exists as physical/rage skills, and rather than hand-to-hand strikes would probably be best as some form of grappling if it were put in specifically. Making the F2 the same across all weapons would also defeat one of the prime objectives of the warrior, which is class function varying with weapon selection.

This is a forum, you posted one of your ideas and I posted my thoughts on your idea. I don’t need to be constructive, if I think there’s a flaw I’m going to say so, that doesn’t mean I need to find a solution for you. It’s not “negative notions”, it’s what I see. And honestly I don’t much like what I see in your suggestions. You say “martial artist” but what you mean is pugilist or hand-to-hand fighter. Swordfighting is a martial art. And while hand-to-hand is cool, the only reason it works in fantasy settings with weapons tends to be because there’s some magic nonsense that makes their fists as good or better than real weapons. I believe that has little to no place in GW2 where everyone, even the casters, rely on weapon sets for ability variety. The fact that your elite spec covers three different roles is inherently an issue, as part of elite specs is to be specialized, that is focused in a certain direction and role.

What I want for warrior is what I signed up for when I made a warrior. Durability and damage, more survivability the longer I stay in combat. Heavy armor, high health, weapon choice having a stong effect on my purpose and strategies. But from my understanding the warrior is great for phalanx strength and burst builds currently due to berserker spec, and not very good at much else. I don’t think my understanding of the class is sufficient enough to make proper suggestions that would fix such deep/profuse problems. Also I’d advise against bringing the devs into this. I understand frustration at the lack of responses, but they’re probably trying to cram as much as possible into whatever they’re doing, be it for LS3 or the 3-month balance patch they’re aiming for.

Thornwolf.9721:

King Cephalopod.7942:

Thornwolf.9721:

But thats why the warrior should get it, because it is a calmer state of mind. It would make sense that over time a warrior becomes humbled or mellow as he gets stronger, he looses the drive to be angry and begins to grow more collected and wise. Its a perfect spec to fit in with how our character grows throughout the game.

So you could say over time the warrior gains the focus of a monk? Mellow and meditative? Less anger, more valor? So you’re saying warriors should develop into guardians as the story progresses?

Im saying they should gain focus and resolve rather than remain as they are now, still retaining their anger but focusing it into wrath and learning to use that as a catalyst. The monk being a combat class that is more based on beating your enemy to a pulp with “Cold anger” rather than heated destruction. Its pretty much the polar and complete opposite of what the berseker is to us now. It is often said that those with a hot temper are less terrifying then those with cold, calculated hatred. Maybe hatred is the fuel of this spec, the more they hate their enemy the stronger they become.

So, focus like a monk, and resolve: that thing that guardians have on F2? You know, Virtue of Resolve? You really want to bring wrath into this? That’s also a guardian thing. Symbol of wrath, tome of wrath that got turned into “Feel my Wrath!”, a combination of radiance (burning intensity) and zeal (controlled aggression). Guardians do burning, but the fire is a cold blue colour instead of a hot orange. You’re asking for dps guardian.

Thornwolf.9721:

But thats why the warrior should get it, because it is a calmer state of mind. It would make sense that over time a warrior becomes humbled or mellow as he gets stronger, he looses the drive to be angry and begins to grow more collected and wise. Its a perfect spec to fit in with how our character grows throughout the game.

So you could say over time the warrior gains the focus of a monk? Mellow and meditative? Less anger, more valor? So you’re saying warriors should develop into guardians as the story progresses?

Not to be rude, but I don’t think you’ve played any guardian. From what I understand the guardian class was supposed to be like the monk (healer) from GW1 in heavy armor. Also see the valor grandmaster trait: Monk’s Focus. And as Jasper said, stylistically the daredevil already fills the role of nimble eastern martial artist.

emkelly.2371:

People still think Healing Sig is “OP”, lawl.

Yeah, whats with that? The skill has almost no healing potential when used, and the heal over time is pretty pidly. I do believe that the guardian elite signet is actually better, but no one complains about that thing.

The guardian elite signet heals for 1408 every 10 seconds to 5 targets in a radius of 300, with cleric’s amulet. 808 without, so 141 to 80 hp/s. The active has range 1200 and full heal (50,000) on 5, but has 4 1/4 stationary cast, with 180 second cooldown untraited. The 10 second timer starts countdown once combat is entered.
Warrior healing signet does 362 hp/s with no healing power, 422 with cleric’s amulet. I know a few guardians who would kill for 6s of resistance. Not trying to say warrior doesn’t need that survivability. But the 10-second timer and to a lesser extent the small range makes the guardian elite sig rather undesirable.

My “build” is a result of little money and complementing the guild comp. Tried multiple times two nights, this was used for night 2.

http://gw2skills.net/editor/?vVMQNAS5ensABddiFdCOCBkdil4BrKAslqXY9gkwWQe/1/OgA-TRyGABA8EAKRdlhUaskysoUCymuBBVpggLCgJ7PAA-e

The trinkets are a mix that I wouldn’t generally recommend, I got them because I wanted to be able to keep them for most game modes as I’m short on laurels. Knight’s gear because I only have that and cleric’s. First night we tried I used “Hold the Line” instead of “Procession of Blades” and ran valor AH instead of zeal, but I was too indestructible in that my health didn’t drop. So I changed it to zeal for more dps. Took healing aegis because with no AH might on crit doesn’t help survivability, and we had a herald to give might anyways.

Our healer was a druid with only clerics trinkets and dps armor the second time around, so “frag o’ faith” plus DH F2 helped supplement the times when astral force was down. We didn’t have enough coordinated pushes/pulls to keep all the red orbs away, so I was most always in the AoE of at least one of them at a time. My health would occasionally spike to less than 1000, but that’s where F3 and the druid came in. Would probably have switched SoJ out if the healer had more healing gear. I also originally ran “Feel My Wrath” instead of “Dragon’s Maw”, but we were severely lacking CC for the break bar in phase 3, so I changed it out.

I wouldn’t say this build is anywhere near optimal, but it’s what I got and it worked well until things started going wrong in phase 3. It’ll probably change again next time if the comp is different.

I find it’s possible to make sense of the idea of “threat” based on the “role” part of RPG, mainly from the lack of a charisma stat in video games. In D&D and the like you could always draw attention with something like intimidate, but that doesn’t translate well to a game where every action is based around killing or not dying by damage in some way. “Threat” is like having a high charisma: you might be the least dangerous person in the room, but you appear to be the most dangerous. You scary. From a role-playing perspective, you fool the mobs into thinking you’re doing much more damage than you actually are. The thing about GW2 is there doesn’t seem to be a good basis for a threat-by-ability system since you only have 3 utilities, a heal, an elite, and weapon-variable skills, so I think stat-based or position-based are two of the only ways devs could go.

On the topic of different types of threat source, while that would add nice variety I think it would end up putting too much of a tax on tanks. DPS players could probably continue to get by on their condi or direct damage stats and healers probably wouldn’t have to change, but someone who wants to tank different raids would suddenly need different stat combos for each section of raid with different threat mechanics, or a tank set for one raid and a DPS for all others.