Guild Wars 2

Traits:

• 1 – RHS – See Sword above

• 2 – Glacial Heart – See Hammer above

• 3 – Stalward Defender – See Shield above

• 4 – Unscathed Contender – In addition to +20% damage while under the effects of Aegis, also grant +25% movement speed while under the effects of Aegis. Thanks.

• 5 – Protector’s Impact – Needs more general use beyond just jumping off cliffs for giggles in WvW. Perhaps add something like this:
  Cast Symbol of Judgment when your HP reaches the threshold (50%). 60sec CD.
  This will add some more reliable synergy to other builds that use symbols, both DPS and heal-support based, aswell as the following.

• 6 – Strength of the Fallen:
  Leave as is, however, make it so the Health Degeneration decrease is always a positive thing by also having it also cause the following:
  Your Symbol of Judgement (that’s the symbol you get from downed state skill 3) removes Bleed, Poison, Torment, Confusion and Burn with each pulse.

Basically, if your opponent didn’t put the effort in to stomp you before downed skill 3 was ready to cast, you’ll probably be getting up and in good time. They’d be no leaving you to bleed out then. Thematically, further con removal also fits in with what the skill currently does in addition to the bleed-out reduction (the 10sec interval con removal)

• 7 – Empowering Might:
  Move to Honour in place of Glacial Heart (trait positions are switched).
  In addition to this, remove the cooldown from it. Virtues are a support line, and might stacking for a party is a offensive support role – this would then give this trait position 3 options – personal DPS buff (Supreme Justice), defensive party support (Absolute Resolution), and offensive party support (Empowering Might). Seems like the trait fits better in Virtues than it does Honour.

If I was to complicate it and characterise it further however, I might make a few more changes to it:
Empowering Might (no CD):
Allies gain 3 stack of might when using Justice’s Active Effect (this is in addition to the bonus from Inspired Virtue – so you’d get 6 stacks when you trigger it for your party).
Whenever your passive Justice triggers, nearby allies gain a stack of Might (alternatively leave it as on-crit, but this seems more thematic and characterises and represents the tradeoff of taking this over Supreme Justice more IMO).

This would give you a few play options – it would synergise well with the Sceptre Trait for fast might-stacking in battle, and as a method to effectively keep your party’s might up in battle, especially if playing a support Staff Guardian whom could also take Honourable Staff for longer Might Stacks.

It would also work well for Guardian pre-battle Might stacking from Staff support Guardians; You could use Empowering Might for 12 stacks of Might, fire off your Virtue of Justice for another 6, then lay down a Fire Field and blast it with your other weapon-set (Hammer, Focus, or with above changes, Shield) for 21+ Might, giving you pre-battle Might stacking abilities comparable to an Elementalist (the other strong magical supporty class if it so chooses). This would give you a strong initial burst of Might and then you could start building it up again via the Traits passive effect once it recharged.

Thoughts?

Guess I’ll throw in my 2$ here aswell…

Greatsword:
Mostly fine IMO, except for this.

• - Skill 5, Chain Skill (5B):
  Reduce casting time from 3/4 to 1/4, (or even instant) so we can reliable use it as in interrupt. Landing the blade originally took enough time.

Sword:
With Mace buff this really lacks a proper role, plus it’s skills are buggy and cumbersome, so quite a few changes here.

• - Skill 1, Final Chain skill (1C)
  Make it a cleaving attack like 1A and 1B, instead of a projectile piercing attack. It’s silly it can be projectile reflected despite being a stab, and it’s awkward mechanic makes it miss inanimate objects (but the chain doesn’t reset, so your one skill constantly misses after 1A and 1B land), making it difficult to kill stuff like the devourer burrows in CoF p2 with it currently.

• - Skill 2
  Make Right-Hand Strength also increase the range of the teleport by 300. This will solidfy Sword as a mobility-based weapon and give it a much stronger place alongside the other heavier DPS melee weapons.

• - Skill 3
  Fix the arc on the projectiles, and let us use it while moving rather than it rooting us.

Mace:
Mostly fine.

• - Skill 3, Chain Skill (3B)
  Let us manually trigger the chain skill earlier, granting the protection on demand at the cost of losing the party-block. This is more consistant with how other channeled blocks work.
• - If Mace final auto (1C) doesn’t cleave as someone said, then yeah, it probably should for consistancies sake.

Shield:
There’s alot we could do here, but I talked about my ideas for this in the specific shield thread, so just gonna simplify stuff here.

• - Skill 4
  Make it grant Aegis in addition to it’s current effect. Remove the PvP split.
  Alternatively, make both this skill and skill 5 grant Aegis if you take the Shield trait in Valor.
• - Skill 5
  Bug fix this, basically. Give it the full listed duration for projectile blocking; Make the projectile absorbs actually register as blocks to trigger associated traits. If you want, make it’s chain skill a blast finisher too.

Torch:
It’s a worthwhile weapon now, however, it’s skill 5 could do with some usability improvements.

• - Skill 5
  Make it also cleanse conditions from the user instead of just allies. Perhaps reduce the channeling time without reducing the overall damage. Alternatively, let it remove Boons from enemy targets it hits, as we lost our “Searing Flames” trait that used to let us do that with the Specialization overhaul. Thematically, it would fit with the weapon.

Hammer:
This is in a good spot; I concur with other people, the biggest problem with it is in the Trait positioning. Easy fix.

• - Move Glacial Heart into the Honour Line, under Master, in the place of Empowering Might. Likewise, move Empowering Might into the Virtues Line, remaining a Master, in the place of Glacial Heart. More on Empowering Might down below.

Sceptre:
Is fine TBH, it does what it needs to do. Projectile speed is supposed to be slow, thats why it hits so hard for a ranged weapon. It already got a velocity buff once, it’s okay now. Longbow is coming for faster ranged strike options.

Staff:
Also fine. It’s a support weapon that does what it’s supposed to.

Focus:
Perfect as is. Already one of the strongest off-hand weapons in the game.

Josh Davis.6015:

How about this?

• Shield of Absorption cooldown goes from 30s to 24s baseline.
• Shield of Judgement cooldown goes from 25s to 20s baseline.

Added to the release notes maintained in General Discussion.

Edit: For clarification, the shield recharge trait is still there on top of this. It brings the cooldowns from 24>19s, and 20>16s.

That’s alot of AoE knockback, but the Shield will still lack anything to really define it. As other posts mentioned, the projectile block duration on Shield 5 needs to be fixed (and you could actually make it trigger as a Block for traits related to that too). but if you don’t want to make drastic changes to shield, maybe you could at least make the trait gives Shield 4 Regeneration (if you are determined that Guardian shouldn’t have Taunt or Resistance), so it can still establish itself as the Healer’s Choice for off-hand on a Guardian (currently this could go to Focus just as easily for condition-removal, the regen from skill 4, and the potential for Blast finishers for more heals in a water field on Focus 5, more than making up in potential to the current Shield 5-pop heal).

Afterall, Focus 4 is nicking Shield 4’s protection, why shouldn’t Shield 4 get to nick Focus 4’s regeneration?

Also, as a side note…I kinda find it funny the shield skills will now have a potential CD of 16s and 19s, when, originally, way back on release, the CDs of the Shield skills were 4t5s and 60s respectively, IIRC (with a PvP-only nerf added to Shield 4 exclusively later), that’s a huge difference (basically a full 200% to 300% more efficient than Shield was on release), perhaps larger in comparison to any other skillset in GW2 in it’s history. – if anything it shows you guys have been way-off with Guardian Shield Balance from day one, so maybe you should trust us and try out our suggestions on this one, this time, a’ight?

EDIT: Why does a numerical forty-five get censored to ‘kitten’? Odd forum coding indeed.

As mentioned, “Charge!” is already used as a Warrior warhorn skill.
That being said, I never did understand the reason to use “Retreat!” on Guardian in GW2. In Guild Wars 1 “Retreat!” was also a Warrior skill. Surely it would have made more sense to draw from the Paragon skill-line up instead as a nod to old game instead? I don’t think anybody ever actually used “Retreat!” in GW1 as it was, it wasn’t a very good skill. The Paragon equivalents, on the other hand…

Anyway, I think “Incoming!” would suit the skill more than “Retreat!” or even “Fallback!”. It’s a GW1 legacy skillname and it’s application was actually similiar to what we see with “Retreat!” in GW2.

In GW1, in it’s first incarnation, “Incoming!” used to reduce damage to all party members by 50% for 3 to 5 seconds (it was an incredibly powerful ability when chained which is why it got its functionality changed). Anyway, that means “Incoming!” in GW1 had a damage reduction element – something we see in GW2 “Retreat!” via Aegis, which reduces incoming damage by blocking an attack.

The second incarnation of “Incoming!” in GW1 (and it’s present incarnation still in the game), was mostly used as a mobility skill – it offered a speed boost to the entire party and some passive health regeneration while moving. While we don’t get the passive regeneration in “Retreat!” in GW2 (though you could argue you sorta can via Altruistic Healing due to the boon application, or the Aegis Heals on removal trait), it does offer a speed boost to your party via Swiftness application, the same way “Incoming!” v2.0 did in GW1.

Due to the legacy of the skills abilities, you can see “Incoming!” would be a far better choice of name for the current GW2 “Retreat!” or even “Fallback!” would be.

“Retreat!” probably would have been a better name for a minor trait or something that would have granted Swiftness to all allies up resurrecting someone, which would have had more in common with it’s GW1 incarnation (which used to offer a Speed Boost to the party, but only if a dead party member was in earshot).

Due to the low CD on the ability giving it reflects would definetly be too much, at least at baseline.

But adding it in as part of a trait (so you have to sacrifice something else to get it), now that could work. I do like the idea, and the visualization of it too.

Clearly, in-combat movement speed is supposed to be one of the Guardian’s weaknesses. It is supposed to be inferior to every other profession in this way.

But limiting Guardian out of combat mobility is just frustrating to the player, and it’s horrible to be locked into Traveller or Speed Runes, or be forced to take Retreat and use Pack Runes (and this is going to become an even bigger problem once the new Trait sysem is released because we’ll lose the ability to trait for extra Boon Duration for round-the-clock swiftness too, due to stats being removed from the trait lines, Virtue in this case).

I like the idea somebody else suggested. You gain a passive 25% Movement Speed bonus while under the affects of Aegis, then just tagging it onto the end of the Unscathed Contender (the +20% Damage while under Aegis) Trait. Realistically, you are still going to be at a mobility and movement speed disadvantage in-combat, because your Aegis will be up only very intermittently in combat, and for very very brief amouns of time; Likewise, it still wouldn’t be easier to flee because your opponent will probably chase you down and only need a single hit to remove your Movement Speed bonus, quite easy with any weapon with a ranged attack, especially seems most Guardian blinds are PBAoE abilities rather than ranged.

But at least we’d be able to build however we want Rune wise on our Guardians and otherwise Trait wise, without feeling like we were severally kitten in simply getting around when out of combat. And no, it’s not a balance concern, because we can just do this already by popping on one of the above mentioned Runesets until we are about to engage in combat, but it’s alot of faff and inconvenient (not to mention, pricey!), and inconvenience for the sake of inconvenience is very very bad…so c’mon guys, throw us a bone.

lordkrall.7241:

Yes.
If that was not the case there would be basically no downside whatsoever to unlock the Elite Specialization.

Well the downside would be not having access to the traits and core profession mechanic changes in the Elite Specialization line that you currently don’t have slotted when you are using another; Afterall the weapon is only a part of the specialization.

Basically, what the titles says.

We know that in Heart of Thorns each profession is getting a new specialization, and with it comes a new weapon, one per profession. We also know you’ll need to have the specialization to use these weapons.

However the question is more specific…will we need the specialization equipped to use the specialization weapon?

This may seem like a no-brainer, but not neccessarily. If you look at the redesigned trait system in HoT, and the previews we saw, you choose various skill lines, and then, using Hero Points, unlock the abilities within that skill line.

For example, you can choose the Shout Skill Line on War/Ranger/Guardian, and the more Hero Points you put into it, the more Shouts you can use equip to your utiltiies; Regardless if you are taking the actual trait-line tied to Shouts as one of your equpped specializations.

So…so long as you own Heart of Thorns, and have used enough Hero Points to fully unlock the entire Elite Specialization traitline (we’ll use Guardian as an example), even if you don’t currently have the Dragonhunter Elite Specialization slotted (instead taking say, Zeal, Radiance, and Virtues), will you still be able to equip a Longbow (as in Dragonhunter there didn’t appear to be any Minor Traits saying “You can now equip Longbows”, although there was a Minor Trait for the Virtue Changes)?

I hope this is the case, as otherwise down the line this could limit possible gear variety when we get a second batch of Elite Specializations – for example, if a new Mesmer Elite Specialization lets you equip main-hand Mace (c’mon, we all know the Moot would suit Mesmer more than any other profession :p ), as Shield is tied to Chronomancer, and Mace is tied to Disco Diva (or w/e lol), as you cannot equip two Elite Specializations at once, you would never be able to wield Mace MH + Shield OH simultaneously on your Mesmer, which would be a real shame.

So…does anyone know exactly how it’s going to work? If Anet could post a comment, or somenone could quote something in an interview I may have missed, that would be great so we know exactly how Elite Specializations and their linked Weapons will work.

TL;DR: While we know you will need to have access to an Elite Specialization to gain the weapon tied to that specialization, will you need to actually have that Elite Specialization slotted at that very time to equip the associated weapon with that Elite Specialization? Or will just having learned and having access to that Elite Specialization be enough? Anybody can clarify?

JonPeters.5630:

Wanted to run a potential idea past you all. Comments welcome.

Tome of Courage -> Signet of Courage
Passive: PBAoE Heal every 10 seconds.
Active: Light of Deliverance

Tome of Wrath -> “Feel My Wrath”
Shout that grants Quickness and Fury

<SNIP>

Thoughts? Comments?

Thanks,

Jon

Totally in for this change. Generally, I only use Tome of Wrath at the moment for the quickness anyway when I don’t need a panic button and my team as at no risk of getting overwhelmed and needing a heal (basically when I’m just looking to maximise team DPS).

Bear in mind in it’s current incarnation, you have just enough time with Tome of Wrath to fire off 2 lots of quickness per cast of the Tome (once immediately upon entering the Tome, and then another as soon as its recharged before the Tome expires), for 10 total seconds of quickness per Tome use, so the new Shout elite would have too accommodate that, though I expect it will anyway through a reduced CD over the Tome.

With that in mind, I really like the entry for the Elite Shout. It makes alot of sense.
Plus, yay for more ease of access to Fury for Guardians.

As for the Signet of Courage, also would be a nice change over the Tome. Once again, most people just use the Tome for Light of Deliverance anyway, so rolling it into a Signet Active makes sense – and considering we already have a Signet that grants a large Healing Power boost, could a Signet-build Healer Guardians become a thing with this change (finally giving Signets some place in Guardian builds)? That’s definitely an interesting concept I’d look forward to trying out.

If the Signet had a CD similar to what the Tome already has, then I don’t foresee any real balance problems with the change – I guess you’d just have to give the Signet active a cast time similar to what the current combined cast time already is for casting the Tome and then casting Light of Deliverance. Also, the pulsing PBAoE Heal for the signet definitely sounds like a really interesting concept, especially to go along with the theme of a Signet Healer Guardian (combined with the Shared Resolve trait ofc, could put out some nice passive healing to a party).

JonPeters.5630:

We like the idea of tomes and if we did this we would hope to bring them back in a future Elite Specialization.

Honestly, Tomes are so different from the rest of the way a Guardian works, that that is probably the best place for them and makes much more sense. Just be ready for backlash when that specialization finally gets released in a new expansion or whatever with people crying foul “OMG, we have to pay to get content back that we already had once but got removed from the game! Lame! ANet got greedy and just care about the $$$s now! The manifesto was all a lie!”. If you guys at ANet are okay with that, by all means, it makes alot of sense IMO to tie Tomes to a new specialization in the future instead and make the current Elites what you just proposed instead.

Hehe, Tomes could be released as a new skill type in general then especially for that expansion with a whole bunch of professions getting them with their new specialization (Necromancer, Elementalist, Revenant, would all probably make sense to be using Tomes too in some form).

Ragnar the Rock.3174:

3: Permeating Wrath. I think one of the dev’s mentioned changing it to burn around the target on VOJ proc ? If so you would have allot of very happy guardians.

You know, one of the niché (but IMO, incredibly useful) traits we are losing is Searing Flames. This would remove a Boon from a target upon Burn application. However, the trait doesn’t seem to have been rolled into any of the new traits.

I feel the new Permeating Wrath would be a good place to put it, helping it become a bit more competitive with it’s alternatives (as the Stunbreak+Stability new combined trait on Courage use is hard to compete with).

bigbobpataki.4796:

Anet eventually has to increase player power IMO (and I may mistakenly speak for the community here) along broader lines like levels.

I hate to break this to you, but I believe you are indeed mistaken here and do not speak for the community. Certainly not the core community (those who are willing to stick around after hype dies down). GW2 does not need an increase in player power (at least not directly), and least of all not with levels. That’d be one of the absolute worst things they could do.

Guild Wars 1 did fine and lived through 3 expansions packs and beyond without ever raising the level cap beyond the original 20, and without losing players at a non-natural rate. If anything, the only thing that eventually ended up losing Guild Wars 1 players, was the release of Guild Wars 2. That’s it.

For those who do want an increase in player “power”…the mastery system is more than enough to take care of that. Just like the PvE only skills were enough to take care of that in GW1’s expansions. You do become more powerful through flexibility (Elite Specializations), gimmicks (increased damage/resistance to various mob types), and safety-nets (Gliders, when knocked off a cliff), which are enough to increase a player’s power without making players that don’t have these feel like they are too handicapped if they don’t have a particular expansion or have a long-grinding road ahead of them before they can compete again.

I think hardly anyone that’s ever gone through the painful grind for Ascended Equipment for all classes wants to have to do that again, ever, and those that never bothered with Ascended Equipment to begin with, certainly don’t want to have to bother with it ever, let alone ever again.

A made a big post on Shield a while back. Guardian Shield 5 is a good skill IMO, and works just fine. While I wouldn’t neccesarily say no to a longer length Projectile Blocking effect on it, I really don’t think the skill needs (nor do I even want) a full rework of it, as much as I like the OPs ideas for it.

As for Skill 4 though. Yeah, it’s very lacklustre. It serves mostly as an effective AFK way to get up your Shield Master achievement, and not much else really, seems as good as Protection is, Hammer totally trumps it for that making it redundant. I’d definetly be for a re-working of Guardian Shield 4, perhaps using one of your Skill 5 suggestions. Though simply making the wave grant Allies Aegis would fix it and let it fill a good role in those Aegis-trait builds.

EDIT: Just a thought, but maybe the offensive portion of the Shield 4 Wave will get the Taunt effect in HoT? This too would actually go along way to making the shield good for at least some role, and cement itself as the off-hand weapon of choice for a tank Guardian, as a Shield should be. The new reworked Shield Trait’s current positioning in the trait lines we’ve been shown would actually make alot more sense if this was indeed the case.

Going by the actual in-game presentation of the magical class the skill uses (not the mechanical way the skill actually works), their current suggestions do make the most sense IMO.

Shelter: Consecration.
I know it’s not a support skill persay (though I’m sure there must be some traits that make it that way at least a little), but thematically it makes the most sense. What skill is also a Consecration? Sanctuary. Look at the artwork for Shelter. If you see Shelter as a mini-personal Sanctuary (and functionally it sorta is), then making it a consecration makes alot more sense.

Healing Breeze: Shout.
Honestly I don’t know what you could really classify this as. But for synergestic purpose ANet have stated we need a Healing skill that’s a shout, and that’s something I can get behind. As magical as healing breeze clearly is (though, TBF, Shouts are magical too, as are most things in Tyria, just less in-your-face magical), and how it doesn’t really fit the way Shouts work, it’s still the best option on the Healing Skill abilities to tag as a shout (in world, thematically, that is). Why? Because when you cast the skill it comes out your mouth. Yes, I know, that’s a lame reason, as others have stated. But it’s still a better reason than we would have for making any other Healing Skill the Guardian has a Shout.

The alternative is a bit extreme. Make “Hold the Line” a Healing Slot skill instead, and buff it appropriately (and bring it’s personal-Heal and party-regen application states in line with the Health gain we currently see from Healing Breeze), and move Healing Breeze over to a utility slot instead, where you can properly typecast it (though once again, I’m not 100% sure where it’d fit even then. Meditation? Consecration? Hard to say. Maybe Guardian could simply do with a new skill type? But then they’d be no need to make it a utility skill, as it could just be the heal skill for that new skill type…so it’s self-contradictory).

Bow of Truth: Spirit Weapon.
Make Bow of Truth a Heal Slot skill instead of a Utility Slot skill, and have it serve as the Spirit Weapon Self-Heal, as somebody suggested. I’m totally behind this proposed change someone made. It makes a tonne of sense. Make sure to give the original summoning of the Bow a decent self-heal element.

Litany of Wrath: Meditation.
Yeah. This is already here. Not that you’d know it. Make it instant-cast, at least, like other Meditations, and we’d at least have something we could work with. I guess further discussion on it is a bit off-topic though, seems it does already fill the Meditation heal-skill role, so that’s sorted…even if it needs a rebalance or redesign.

Signet of Resolve: Signet.
This skill is the Signet-based heal skill, is already here and in-game (has been since pre-release :P) and is perfectly fine. Just mentioning it for completionists sake.

As for the Elite Skills;
Well, I guess Renewed Focus could become a Meditation again, just like it used to be when it was a Utility skill rather than an elite. That makes some sense. Alternatively, thematically it would fit as a Consecration as well – merely for the same reason I gave for Shelter (it’s a mini-personal Sanctuary).

As for the Tomes; Yeah, like Healing Breeze, really not sure what to do with those, they also don’t fit any skill class the Guardian currently has. They do fit skill classes other professions have though. Like Healing Breeze, maybe they would be better off as a new skill type, even without any matching Traits on the Guardian itself – but then, as someone suggested, make the spells you actually cast with the Tomes various Guardian core-skill types. I like the idea, and that could work. Otherwise, the summoning of the book itself – I guess Spirit Weapon makes the most sense if not using a new/stolen skill-type, but it’s a little bit of a stretch for what the skill actually is. Suppose it doesn’t really matter though if the Tome 1-5 skills themselves get their own, appropriate, Guardian skill types though. If anything it’d be a way to make them all-inclusive with the various Guardian core-skill type traits it at least some place (seems while the summon Book spell itself could just about be a Spirit Weapon, the 1-5 skills on the book could not be).

To be fair, this is what the current dailies we have were supposed to do. But you are right, they are no-where near as immersive as the GW1s, and don’t feel anywhere near as satisfying. Getting the bonus chest for each one helps these days (and I do often try to do many of them as a result), but it’s not quite enough to keep you playing once you are done (whereas some of the ones we saw in GW1, I would on occassion do on every character).

We could do with proper area bonuses on a daily rotation; With examples such as:
1 Double karma & gold rewards for completing events in Timberline Falls all-day.
2 Double-token rewards for completing an explorable path in Caudeceus Manor all-day (yes, this would grant you the double tokens when it came to the reduced token amount for a second run through on the same day too – making it still worthwhile). Story mode would also offer some bonus tokens on this day.
3 Nicholas type character with a daily (or weekly) item rotation appearing in a hidden pre-determined place (changing every day/week, like in GW1) with a “Find 5 junk-item” in exchange for some bonus laurels (which single-handedly would help increase the value of various junk items on the TP too, so bonus gold-sinks for ANet due to TP trading costs rather than people vendoring too, and ANet love gold sinks!) type sub-quest. If weekly, perhaps repeatable 5 times for 5-10 bonus laurels in one week, like it was in GW1 (a weekly time gate rather than a daily time-gate, so you could do all 5 lots in one sitting or spread it over the week).

Those are examples of the type of thing I can think off. No reason they couldn’t co-exist with the current dailies which are quick-fix focused.

These would be great additions that would help to keep gameplay varied and interesting, always giving you something to do, like we saw in GW1.

Though a variant of these sort of things is coming in Heart of Thorns I suppose with the daily rotation map event rewards for things like Lodestones, etc, that we currently see in Silverwastes and Drytop. It should help reinvigorate certain parts of the game.

For what it’s worth, it appears the name of any equipped pet sticks, no matter gametype. Therefore this includes saving the name of your underwater and PvP pets too (so if there was still underwater areas in PvP, you could have up to 8 saved pet names, but as it stands, it remains at 6).

phys.7689:

you guys boundless optimism is interesting but they already said one weapon per specialization.
you can hope for other things, but weapons, your only getting one, and its a shield.

ImTasty.2163:

Sadly this is not the case. It was stated the specializations would only get 1 new weapon. Main hand pistol might be released as a spec later down the road just not right now. Lets just hope they role out more specs at a decent pace.

Who said it’s not the case? ANet never said it. I already know it was stated by ANet that specializations would only get one new weapon – infact if you read my post properly you will see I already mentioned it myself! So how does restating it discount what I said at all? Once again, if you read my post, giving Mesmer a main-hand Pistol would not be a new weapon, as Mesmers can already use the Pistol (yes, it’s true!) in their off-hand, which does not make it a new weapon for them and means MH Pistol is still a possibility. If you understand the semantics of what was said, it makes sense. I can’t remember specific examples, but we’ve have actually seen ANet use this kind of logic before.

If you still don’t understand what I was saying though, let me break it down for you in a visual form you may understand better:
Current Mesmer Weapons
Greatsword – 2H
Staff – 2H
Sceptre – MH
Sword – MH/OH
Focus – OH
Torch – OH
Pistol – OH
Spear – 2H
Trident – 2H
Total Usable Weapons: 9

Post HoT Mesmer Weapons
Greatsword – 2H
Staff – 2H
Sceptre – MH
Sword – MH/OH
Focus – OH
Torch – OH
Pistol – OH/MH (speculation)
Shield – OH (new entry)
Spear – 2H
Trident – 2H
Total Usable Weapons: 10

Total New Weapons in HoT = 1

See? The Mesmer still only has one new weapon – but it gets to use one of it’s old weapons in a different way. ANet’s statement of “each specialization only gets one new weapon” does not remove the possibility of the above. Mainhand Pistol would not be a new weapon. It’s just a different way to equip a weapon they already have (and I reiterate on what I said before, ANet have already said that they’d be using current existing weapons in different ways – people presumed they meant the Staff being used as a melee weapon rather than a magical one by the Revenant – but what’s to say they didn’t also mean something like this?).

Now that’s not to say I’m 100% certain this will happen, I’m really not. I know ANet can be lazy sometimes so it would not surprise me if it wasn’t; But that doesn’t mean it’s not a possibility.

Vizen.2049:

Well, Rangers are going to be Druids this has been confirmed, so that’s 5 new weapon Skills + a new Class Mechanic and other goodies, another confirmation is the Greatsword Necromancer, Hammer Engi and i believe guardian has been hinted at a Bow of some sort again 5 new weapon skills for each of the classes.

And 12 for greedy Elementalists with their MH Sword.

When Warrior and Thief come up, they too might get more skills that it would first appear, due to an extra Burst skill (Warrior) that would be required for a new MH weapon, and the Dual-Wield Skill 3 Mechanic of Thieves if they get a new 1Her.
Also there’s nothing to say Engie might not get a new Kit, which would be another +5 weapon skills (not to mention the extra utilities they’ll be getting anyway via Toolbelt).

With all this in mind, I too find it very hard to believe they would leave the poor Mesmer with only two weapon skills. They’re almost certain to have something (such as the MH Pistol example) to make-up for it.

SicilianDragon.3071:

And now, they are pursuing a tiny minority of players by affecting the vast majority of innocent players. Just because ‘most’ transactions are under 500g per week, doesnt mean we should be banned from doing more.

They aren’t affecting the vast majority of players. Most players don’t send over 500g to other players in a week. They are affecting a limited minority, and chances are more often than that, when more than 500g is sent, it’s a hacker or goldseller.

I’ve been playing since Beta, and I’ve only ever had someone send me that much money once (and infact, I returned it, because I couldn’t accept such a huge amount of charity from a guildie, it would have made me feel bad).

However, my account was hacked once and I lost everything I had until an account restore. Thing is, I noticed as soon as it was happening, but due to response times from support I didn’t get to address it soon enough, and by the time they did everything I had was gone and I had to have an account restore.

Point in case, if this precaution had been in play then, I may not have had to use that once per-lifetime account restore, and may have been in a recoverable position still by the time ANet got back to me…so this change actually benefits the security of the majority of players, and it does only affect an innocent minority negatively.

I’m open to alternative solutions and limits, but honestly I can’t think of anything that would work aswell. As others mentiioned in other threads, real banks do this sort of thing too. And they’ve been around for centuries. If there was a better way, wouldn’t they have found it by now?

It’s been mentioned before, and I’ll mention it again.
Making a suggestion for MH Pistol on Mesmer is fine, I’m all for it.

But those people kicking off angrily at the Mesmer “only getting offhand Shield and two weapons skills!” in some of the posts that follow. We don’t know that yet.
All we know is that they are getting off-hand Shield.

We do not know if they are getting a main-hand Pistol too or not. It’s quite possible. ANet just said one new weapon per profession (in this case, Shield). They did not say anything about reusing weapons the profession already has (don’t forget, Mesmer already has Pistol, just in offhand only) in different ways. Infact, they actually said they’d be taking currently existing concepts for weapons and classes and redesigning them for specializations, so hold your breathe and don’t just jump to conclusions.

Mesmer might still be getting a MH Pistol. Wait and see until there’s some confirmation they are not.

hybrid.5027:

How is he supposed to know that you cannot communicate properly and that he should “know” what you meant?

By not skipping ahead and reading the post properly and in context, by, ooo, I don’t know, looking at the post I quoted (that’s the point of the feature), so you get it in the correct context.
If you read the quote on my original comment (and had been actually following and reading the thread, like you really should – it’s not like it’s 100 pages long or anything), what I meant was perfectly clear. Unless somebody was just stupid.

Sorin’s previous posts were focusing on just that.
But if you still feel you didn’t understand what was being said, well, you do now at least, so there should be no further point me having to explain.

Arkinos.7245:

KotCR.6024:

Sorin.4310:

There isn’t a specialization as effective as damage, but I’m not sure there can be. Without the original trinity, most of the focus has to be DPS. How could a control build compete with DPS? And I don’t mean within the possible control in the game. I mean how could you change control to be as effective as DPS?

Isn’t this why we are getting the break-bar with HoT though?
The idea being that you can just sit there and have everyone DPS, but that it’s actually faster and more efficient (and therefore, optimal), to knock out the break-bar first, and then kill it.

For example, when the break-bar cracks, the boss takes 50% more damage. So you could just have a full team of ‘zerkers whacking away, but it’d be much faster (and therefore more efficient) to have one guy specced not ‘zerker, but mass CC in order to crack that break-bar as often as possible. The result being 4x ’zerkers and 1x CC’er clears the content faster and more efficiently than 5x ’zerkers would.

Support is a bit trickier to address, but then, as others have pointed out, we sorta already have that a functional, efficient, and at times, optimal, role in a dungeon team via might/vulnerability stacking, reflects, stat boosts, and stealth fields.

Please explain how Zerker gear reduces your CC.

Because I can totally run a hammer or mace with Zerk gear, and why wouldnt I?
You cant increase your CC with items.

Please explain where i said “’zerker gear” specifically.

Read it again. Pretty sure the word I used was “specced”, which is short for specialised, which usually refers to Trait setup. I.E. a ’zerker specced player is one who goes for pumping out as much personal DPS as possible (as opposed to say, a support specced player which would be a PS Warrior with Banners, for example).

Though, come to think of it, yes, in that case, actually Boon Duration equipment/food is a thing too, like I guess you could argue CC-lengthening equipment/food could be a thing for a CC spec. Gear might be a thing there too, for example a guy specialising in CC procs might be better off with Assassin’s gear for the higher critical chance (and therefore more reliable Crit procs) than ’zerker gear.

So in the example I used, instead of having one player focused on traits that maximise DPS, you have the one player focused on traits to max out his CC output to bring the break-bar down as fast as possible.

Though chances are, you knew what I meant in the first place, and you were just being obnoxious about it.

segman.3560:

you cant be a tank both in gw1 and gw2 because you have no control over mob aggro;

You could totally tank in GW1. The AI worked there the way it does here. If you blocked line of sight, the enemies will all run round a corner and clump up in an attempt to attack you. This is how we get stacking in GW2.

However, the difference in GW1, was that you had a physical presence (as did mobs). Whereas everybody can move freeform in GW2, in GW1 mobs couldn’t move through players, and players couldn’t move through mobs (and in PvP, players couldn’t move through players either). This meant, that you could cornerblock in GW1.

It was exactly like stacking in GW2, except instead of having the entire party on the same spot round the corner, you’d just have your tank there. The mobs will run into him first, and, due to being unable to move through him, would just all stop and attack him. The rest of the team would be further back. The tank could throw out the odd melee AoE while rotating defensive enchantments and stances, while the rest of the party nuked the enemy stack that was stuck on the tank from a safe distance behind the tank (positioned in such a way that they’d have to move through the tank to get to them, which they couldn’t do, and the AI was too stupid to move around him).

By adding a bodyblocking feature in GW2 also, you’d be surprised how many problems they’d fix. It’s funny really because they probably removed it to stop this very tactic, only for it to re-emerge in a different form – the entire group stacking and sharing defensive buffs – like we see in dungeons in GW2 today.

Sorin.4310:

There isn’t a specialization as effective as damage, but I’m not sure there can be. Without the original trinity, most of the focus has to be DPS. How could a control build compete with DPS? And I don’t mean within the possible control in the game. I mean how could you change control to be as effective as DPS?

Isn’t this why we are getting the break-bar with HoT though?
The idea being that you can just sit there and have everyone DPS, but that it’s actually faster and more efficient (and therefore, optimal), to knock out the break-bar first, and then kill it.

For example, when the break-bar cracks, the boss takes 50% more damage. So you could just have a full team of ‘zerkers whacking away, but it’d be much faster (and therefore more efficient) to have one guy specced not ‘zerker, but mass CC in order to crack that break-bar as often as possible. The result being 4x ’zerkers and 1x CC’er clears the content faster and more efficiently than 5x ’zerkers would.

Support is a bit trickier to address, but then, as others have pointed out, we sorta already have that a functional, efficient, and at times, optimal, role in a dungeon team via might/vulnerability stacking, reflects, stat boosts, and stealth fields.

Simple fix.

Re-enable the rezzing of dead players using the hard-rez skills, rather than just downed players. Wasn’t that the point of the skills in the first place?

It was originally changed to stop an exploit using them to skip the gates at the beginning of CoF p1 IIRC, but we’ve had far worse far more tolerated exploits since then, it’s archaic, the change is no longer required and it should be reverted.

People might actually use these skills other than the Warbanner then. Currently they see zero use, because they simply don’t do enough (and in some cases they literally are no faster than picking up the person from a downed state yourself).
If it has to be a PvE only change, fair enough, but do it.

Linsey Murdock:

For now, I’ll say that we’ve been working on new legendary weapons, the first handful of which will be introduced in Heart of Thorns, with more to come in subsequent updates.

Personally, I’m perfectly fine with this (although it would be nice if they’d give us a bit of info on up-and-coming legendaries so people can start gathering the mats they’ll need ready for their release), as legendaries take a while to get anyway (discounting credit cards), under two conditions:

1: We actually get the missing legendaries tracks eventually, and within reasonable time – not three years after the release of HoT.
2: The way the PR is handled. When we actually get the rest of the legendaries that were originally going to be in HoT, Anet need to be like:
“Good news everyone! We’ve finally finished work on the other six legendaries we promised you, and the collections required to begin your legendary character defining journey are finally available! If you own Heart of Thorns, click here/see in-game for more info and background knowledge on these epic weapons!”
…rather than..
“WOAW! BRAND NEW CONTENT INCOMING! SIX BRAND NEW AWESOME LEGENDARRRIIIEESS HAVE BEEN ADDED TO THE GAME! AREN’T WE FANTASTIC GIVING YOU ALL THIS AMAZING FREE NEVER BEFORE SEEN CONTENT FOR HEARTS OF THORN OWNERS! AREN’T WE JUST THE BEST HERE AT ANET? NOW GET DOWN ON YOUR KNEES!”
‘Bonus’ points if a gemstore item is required to craft the post-HoT release legendaries :’(.

I can’t remember exactly which game it was now, but a game I played several years ago did this in the past – promised something at release, but didn’t have it, saying they would release it later (which is fair enough, but…), then only added it in a patch a while later and tried to pawn it off as ‘brand new free content, aren’t we awesome?’. It really got my back up (I guess these days this could fit alot of games though, right?).

It’s not amazing but it’s not minor either, especially if you combine with other sources of healing. And once again, that’s from a solo perspective. From a group perspective, it’s actually a hefty heal overall if you catch 5 allies in it. Once again, group focus, not solo focus.

The channelling is next to nothing, it takes like a second, then you can pop the bubble for the heal if you wish and carry on your merry way (you don’t have to wait till the Shield expires if you don’t wish too). You probably aren’t going to get rupted – the bubble just pushed melee ‘rupters away, and projectile ’ruptions can’t get you because of the bubble. There is exceptions of course (like Necro fear, Stability or Defiant Mobs), but that’s usually how it’s going to go.

Have Anet actually said “the Mesmer is only getting 2 new weapon skills?”. I don’t believe they have. All they’ve said is that each profession will only get one new weapon.

Alot of people have been crying because they wanted the Mesmer to get main-hand Pistol. What’s to say they won’t? There’s no info around at all that says they won’t, from what I can tell. Technically, giving the Mesmer main-hand Pistol isn’t giving them a new weapon, as they can already use the Pistol, just only in their off-hand. Giving them it as a main-hand isn’t giving them access to a new weapon, it’s merely giving them a new way to use a currently existing weapon (so still follows the only one new weapon per profession rule)…and Anet have already said that they are looking for new ways to use old weapons (people assumed they meant the Revenant’s Staff being used as a melee weapon rather than a casting weapon, but that doesn’t mean that’s the only thing they meant).

There’s also nothing to say that a Mesmer might not get a new set of skills for Sword or Sceptre if they spec as a Chronomancer or whatever their specialization is going to be, that also is quite possible.

If anybody will get the shaft, it’ll probably be Warrior, as they already have an incredible number of weapons to choose from. Personally, I think they’ll get either Staff or Pistol, and if they get Pistol, once again, there’s nothing to say Warrior won’t be able to dual-wield it for five new weapon skills too.

From what I can tell, everybody is going to be getting at least 5 new weapon skills.
Ranger – Staff, confirmed, 5 skills.
Necromancer – Greatsword, confirmed, 5 skills.
Guardian – Longbow, (confirmed?), 5 skills.
Engineer – Hammer, (confirmed), 5 skills.
Elementalist – MH Sword, (confirmed?), 12 skills (Attunements).
Thief – 1H/2H/OH?, (speculation), 5 skills (Dual Wield; I.E. Even if it’s a off-hand only, you’ll get at least 5 skills: New = 2, Pistol + New = +1, Sword + New = +1, Dagger + New = +1, Total = 5. ANet will probably go with a 2H to save them some effort though).
Warrior – Pistol/Staff?, (speculation), 2-6 skills. Same issue as we have with the Mesmer. If it’s Pistol OH only, 2 skills, Pistol MH would be 3 skills +1 burst (though I think that’s unlikely), DW Pistols or Staff would be 5 skills, with another +1 for a burst skill.
Mesmer – OH Shield, (confirmed), 2 skills – But as explained, there’s nothing to say they won’t get a Pistol MH too with another +3 skills, or have the functionality of Sceptre or Sword change with specialization for another +3 skills – considering what we see with everybody else, I actually think one of these options is pretty likely, unless the Elementalist is actually nicking the Mesmer data slots for it’s extra skills :p.

SHIELD 4 (Shield of Judgement)
Moving onto Shield 4. There’s not as much to say about it. Protection is a strong Boon, no one can deny that, and once again, it could potentially stop more damage than the Blinds from Focus 4 (all depends where and when you use it, I suppose, not forgetting there’s plenty of mobs that Blind doesn’t work against). Shield 4 doesn’t do anything amazingly special, but it certainly has it’s place – if anything, it’s overshadowed by the more frequent Protection offered by Hammer auto-attack. It’s not terrible on it’s own though. It’s also a pretty decent pull-skill, due to it’s wide cone, but then again, so is Focus 4.
As for PvP, the shorter duration of the Protection does hurt the skill some (and goes into what I said earlier about Anet worrying about the Shield perhaps being too strong a weapon choice for the Guardian), but assuming you are bringing the Shield for it’s incredible Skill 5, it can be useful for when you are just trying to reduce incoming damage to your allies fighting over a point, or if you are anticipating an incoming Stun and Burst from a stealthed Thief hovering around the point you are standing on to cap.
I do like the idea of making Shield 4 another source of Aegis instead of or aswell as Protection (they’d probably have to the increase the CD again, but it’d still be nice), which would help make it a more respectable option for general use and in particular for players running builds that use alot of those “on block/shattering aegis” traits), and could be the one step needed to make those type of traits relevant enough to be worth basing a build around.
Also, Shield needs a blast finisher of some kind (or at least, a leap finisher), and Shield 4 would probably be the best place to put it, considering Shield 5’s already incredible utility.

TL; DR
The original problem with Shield was that it made bad first impressions due to ridiculously long CDs on it’s skills, this has levvied lasting opinion against the weapon, even though after several balance patches, this is no longer an issue with the weapon, people won’t give it a chance.

The shield is a focused group support weapon, not a solo/support hybrid like the focus, and as a result, comparison between personal benefits of focus over shield are not entirely fair and often don’t take all factors into account.

Shield 5 is an incredibly powerful skill with alot of really strong and useful utility. It doesn’t need any buffs or changes. And if you think it does, chances are you don’t understand the game, it’s mechanics, or even your class, half-as-good as you think you do.

Shield 4 is a bit ‘Meh’, Protection is good but the skill is a bit bland, and if there are to be any changes made to shield, this is where they should be. I like the idea of having it grant Aegis, I think this opens alot of potential to the class, and fits the theme of the weapon. Also, Shield could do with a Blast Finisher or at least a Leap Finisher, and if it get’s one of these, this is where it should go.

Have fun!

SHIELD 5 (Continued)
The second aspect of the skill, that we just touched upon, is the knockback. Anybody remember in the Betas when Warrior Hammer Earthshaker used to do an AoE knockback? But Anet deemed it too powerful and for final release changed it to just a Stun? Well, guess what still has 360 degrees AoE knockback? Guardian Shield 5. This is a strong asset in and of itself, but the hidden value here is the cast time – it’s almost instantaneous (ignore the casting time of the tooltip, the second you hit Shield 5, so long as you aren’t CC’d in someway, it’ll work instantly). There’s not alot of interrupting skills in the game that cast as fast and in such a wide area as Guardian Shield 5 does. This may lead it to only niché uses in PvE, but this is a very strong asset to have in PvP.
Many time’s I’ve seen an enemy in the distance beggining to stomp a downed ally, and I’ve had to run closer to close the gap close enough to get close enough to teleport to him using Judge’s Intervention, and then I’ve instant knocked him back using Shield 5 preventing his stomp, when by the time I reached him he was already in mid-air with the stomp about to finish. Very few skills have that plausible a reaction time window, but Shield 5 does (and often works too, because the stomping player didn’t see it coming and already blew his blind or stability on stopping the downed players personal downed CC skill, seems you are literally inteferring at the last millesecond).

Finally, there’s the most obvious component of the skill. The projectile defense. Needless to say, there’s many applications for this in GW2. It’s niché use again in PvE, seems you do have other projectile defense options (namely, Wall of Reflection, and Shield of the Avenger), but for cases when those two may not be enough (Fractal Grawl Shaman, I’m looking at you), it certainly pulls it weight as a third Projectile Defense (and in these encounters in particular that bonus heal really does come in handy), and will give you that extra little window you need to get Wall back up.
Then, on the PvP side of stuff, the meta right now is alot of Longbows from Rangers and Warriors, with imitation ranged burst coming from the odd Thief. The projectile defense of Shield 5 is worth it’s weight in gold here. Hit it up the second you see that Rapid Fire coming in (a skill in particular alot of Guardians I’ve see complain about, which is silly, because right here, Guardians have the tools to handle it without destroying their build). Unlike PvE, this is your best option, since you don’t want to give up a Meditation as you’d be losing a Stunbreak, Con Removal, and/or burst Fury/Heal. By bringing an offhand Shield, you counter-play the meta, while retaining all the excellent utility and sustain 3x traited Meditations on your utility bar gives you (not to mention, it will give you yet another burst heal!). Once again, the Blind from Focus 4 is no viable alternative here – it’ll only block the first arrow of the Rapid Fire, and you have to actually be facing your target to pull it off – not to mention the cast time! Focus 5 dampens the overall attack but does not stop it, and by using it on advance you are wasting the burst damage potential of the skill (whereas the Heal from SoA is far less likely to be wasted).

Is that all too much to read? Good, then maybe you realise just how good and how much application Guardian Shield 5 has now.

I’m going to jump right in here and defend the Guardian Shield, because alot of people give it undeserved flack (especially the complaints about skill 5, are you guys nuts?).
[This ended up rather long, so I’ll put in a TL; DR for people that CBA to educate themselves].

THE ESSAY/FIRST IMPRESSIONS
The problem with Guardian Shield, is, upon release, it got off to a really bad start. Shield 5 had a 60 second cooldown, and Shield 4 had a 40 second cooldown. These cooldowns were insane, and Anet were obviously afraid that the off-hand weapon’s functionality may have been too good. This put a sour taste in people’s mouths when it came to Guardian Shield.

However, after a number of buffs and several cooldown reductions, Guardian Shield 4 & 5 now sit at a respectable CD of 25seconds and 30seconds. This isn’t too bad at all, and the skills deserve people’s appreciation again.

ROLE
First things first. Guardian Shield is intended as a party support weapon, which no doubt is why the Shield is so iconic with the Guardian seems the Guardian is supposed to be all about party support. I firmly believe that their would be alot less kittening about the Guardian Shield skills however if they simply swapped it skills with Focus. The Focus is the stronger weapon in a solo setting, however in a group setting it isn’t (both have their functions here), but many people want to run around the world with Sword & Shield all knight style rather than with a wavey bit of cloth, which is understandable, but I think is also the core reason people disdain the Shield, not really because the skills themselves are that bad – just as they are group centric skills people don’t give them a chance (people are inherently selfish, afterall).

SHIELD 5 (Shield of Absorption)
I’ll start with Shield 5, as this is a really strong skill and perhaps I do wonder if maybe it has become a bit overpowered just to encourage more Guardian Shield use, at least in sPvP (it’s strong in PvE too, but the knockback, while one of the skills strongest assets, does screw up the dungeon-stacking meta a bit, but honestly it’s not that different from the annoying Ranger who spams Longbow 4 needlessly all the time – at least this skill will still add something to those situations, via projectile protection and healing, unlike the Ranger Longbow 4 which servers no purpose in this situation and is nothing but a DPS decrease for the party, and even the Ranger himself).

Alot of people forget that the Guardian Shield 5 is a chain-skill, and you can pop it for one of the fastest and strongest weapon-based group heals in the game. It heals 1300 health at level 80 which is 2600 health a minute with the 30sec CD, which is nothing to snot at. Now consider it can affect your entire team, you are looking at a 13000 extra healing a minute. That’s good. If you stack healing power, you can get it to a roughly 2k~ heal, which is 4k~ a minute, or 20k~ for your team overall. This is much stronger than the HoT heal from Focus 4.

Kraljevo.2801:

I sincerely hope that it is NOT a condition based weapon.

Well, Guard needs one. It’s the only class in the game that can make zero use of the Condition Damage stat. You can’t justify it for Burning alone, considering burning doesn’t stack intensity (and you know, the strongest Burning buff is actually in the Power Damage line anyway). A Condition Damage weapon would add more to the build variety of the class than any other weapon set they could add.

Just because you don’t personally like Condition Damage, or because it’s not as optimum as Power damage, doesn’t mean the class shouldn’t get a viable option for it like every other class in the game has.

I think it’s highly likely to be a ranged condition damage weapon. Three reasons for this:

1 – Guardian lacks viable ranged combat options, currently only having Sceptre (the staff range is way too short for most skills to count). I expect this weapon will have access to Bleed, in addition to Burning, if not Torment too (or perhaps Torment instead of Bleed, to set Guardian Con-Damage apart from the main-damage source for other classes’ Con-Builds). As powerful as Sceptre is (that DPS!), it’s also pretty boring and doesn’t really do anything except straight up damage.
2 – The Guardian lacks any effective condition damage builds, due to only having access to Burn natively, and a condition-variant Retaliation via Traits.
3 – As others have said, it was the only Spirit Weapon that a Guardian has that they couldn’t equip a martial variant off.

I would have rathered another 1H ranged weapon instead, but I’ll settle for this.
Will look forward to using it; the Two-Handed Mastery trait also just became even more versatile, if they remember to update it :P.

I’m also curious what weapon Guardian will lose to gain access to this with specialisation. Perhaps Staff? But maybe even Greatsword to force you into a Con-Damage role rather than letting you have a Pow-Damage role. Sword+Torch and Longbow could be a pretty effective Condition Damage spec.

@Drennon
That certainly sounds like a Guardian skill, considering it’s a Symbol. By the description, I’d say it fits pretty well.

Based on what you said I’d have said Necromancer originally, like it appears you were thinking they have some of the strongest DoT in the game (it’s just that DoT is limited in usefulness in PvE in GW2), and three-quarter of their main-hand weapons are ranged (albeit only mid-range), they are casters, they are highly sustainable, perhaps being the hardest to kill class in-the-game discounting dedicated bunker set-ups, and as a result being tied with Warrior as having the easiest no-brain survivability potential, and they aren’t heard to learn. However, there’s that mobility thing, which for sure, is an issue with Necromancers, they do get a passive 25% move buff signet, but that’s about it (every non-heavy gets one of those, excepting Engineer), other than that they have no leaps and only one accessible teleport which needs a target.

When it comes to the other casters, Elemenatalists can be hard to play for new players due to them being made of paper on their natural-assets alone (low health pool, low armour), and while they can be incredibly resilient and hard-to-kill, you’ll need to know the class and be able to play well to be able to do this, making them a poor choice for a first-time player. As for Mesmers, as you said, they didn’t click with you and certainly have a more unusual playstyle than your regular MMO classes.

So dropping the caster requirement, I would then say Ranger or Warrior.

Ranger fits most of the criteria you mentioned rather well; They have a large amount of ranged combat options, have some strong and easily accessible group support via Healing Spring, Spirits and Spotter, are deceptively resilient due to pet-support and a large number of built-in evades (and even a stealth) on their weapons giving them solid sustain when coupled with their medium armor and health pool, and have a few good viable DoT options (though these elements aren’t used much these days ever since the Longbow buff, overshadowing them, they work no-less effectively than they did back then).
To top it off they have some of the best mobility in the game, with a 25% speed passive signet, and easy access to stability and swiftness, and frequent possible leap skills.

As for Warrior they are the idiots’ class. Not saying you are an idiot, not at all, but it does make them a solid choice for new players. They have a high natural health pool and heavy armour, along with strong passive health-regen, making them pretty hard to screw up on for newbies, and giving you a respectable level of sustain in almost any set-up (probably one of the factors that contributes to their popularity for PuGs, where you don’t always know the calibre of player you are getting). They also are heavy on front-loaded easily-accessible damage, making many people falsely believe they are the strongest DPS class in the game (in actuality, they are in the bottom half of classes for DPS potential, but that’s a different story), though once again, the benefit of this, is that even with a bad set-up, you are likely to do more damage on a Warrior than you are on any other class with a bad set-up.
They have some limited DoT potential via Swords and Bows, so you’d still have that option if that’s what you like. One of the areas they are very strong in, for any standard of play, is group support, albeit this is once again, in the Warriors case, mostly done via brainless passive stat-number boosts via traits, banners, and passive Might and Vulnerability proc’ing, though they do have alot of potential here.
As for your final concern on mobility, Warrior’s isn’t the greatest but it’s not weak either. They have no passive 25% speed signet for roaming simplicity, but they do have access to round-the-clock Swiftness at the cost of an Elite and Weapon slot, and they have a number of leaps, rushes and dashes on their bladed weapons that help them get around efficiently; They’ve got potential here but they aren’t quite as flexible at it as some other classes are. They are a good choice thought, especially for new players, as they are rather well-rounded as a class and, once again, are hard to screw-up on.

Finally, Engineer would also be a good fit for your criteria, but, similiar to Elementalist, there’s a steeper learning curve with them, and they take a good deal of understanding to use well, so you’ll probably want to skip over them as a first class too.

As others have mentioned, it’s crazy difficult to get Magic Find maxed out at 300% as it is at the moment; I’m sitting on about 200%, I’ve been playing since release (in varying levels of intensity, though), and had 100% more or less when the original Magic Find change was introduced (so since then I’ve only gained 100% or so and I salvage everything and have salvaged a great many Ectos for Crystalline Dust in the past too, due to having also used much of that). You really, really, really, have to be trying to have maxed it already.

That being said, while I don’t think they should ever increase the Magic Find cap (as with Boosters, Environmental Effects etc, you can get to around 500% anyway I believe), there definetly should be a use for the Essence of Luck once you’ve reached that 300 cap, other than the occassional new item recipe.

But I think the Magic Find consumable is a good idea. Perhaps introducing a method that lets you convert 50 Exotic Essences of Luck into a Magic Find Booster, similiar to Mawdrey 2, though to be fair it could just aswell be a simple artificer recipe that everybody gets.

The Guardian male animations have been rather lacklustre since day one, sadly.
It’s a shame too, because the descriptor ANet gave of the Guardian as a heavy armor fighter who generates massive amounts of magical energy and sort of just throws them around (rather than using them with finesse like other casters do) gives a really nice ideal to how a Guardian would fight, and is very similiar to the He-Man style Zatoichi suggested.

They did used to have one cool animation (and as far as I know, the only place in the game it was actually used), which was for Staff 5 (Line of Warding). The Guardian used to do a little twirl, levitating a bit, then slam his staff into the ground and shout “You Shall Not Pass!” all hard-core Gandalf style – but when they altered the skill to be usable on the move, they replaced it with the boring simple silent hand-wave animation you see for Staff 5 today and it doesn’t feel powerful or threatening at all.

Perhaps though, while it doesn’t exactly fit, this would be a good candidate as a replacement Empower animation, rather than having unused assets in-the game (especially as cool as this one was). They could slow down the twirl and the levitate and use it as the first stages of might channeling, with the final channel and heal coming on just as the Guardian slammed the staff into the ground. Naturally, you’d have to replace the voice line (as the current one wouldn’t make much sense for the skill), but it’d definetly be an improvement.

I’d settle for the female animations if that’s all we were allowed to get though. Was a big fan of Paragons in GW1 anway, so anything remotely similar to their epic combat stylisings is a win for me. They always felt so majestic and powerful, and I really miss that golden wing animation!

Then, as far more far-fetched suggestion, maybe we could get Dragon Age 2/3 style Staff animations for the Guardian autoattack, which would finally give the staff more of an awesome feel rather than the dull lowly simple constipated style of the weapon today.

evilunderling.9265:

KotCR.6024:

Other than that, as others have mentioned, DPS Meters are a bad idea and should be avoided like the plague. They discourage friendliness , accessibility, and co-operation, and encourage negative playstyles, limit build creativity and originality, and train players in all the wrong things when it comes to actually learning the game and becoming good at it.

Please, enlighten me as to how DPS meters do any of these things.

Are you telling me that anyone with a DPS meter instantly turns into someone who thinks that other players’s respective worths are defined solely by the holy numberz? Because funnily enough, that’s a load of horse crap.

No it isn’t, and this is exactly what happens if you’ve ever had any experience with games with a DPS Meter. You need to remember, this is the internet, and on the internet, people suck and are egotistical.

As for how DPS Meters do these things, several other posters have just already explained it to you in more detail, so there’s no need for me to repeat. I can give you an example though;

A Phalanx Warrior bringing all offensive-stat Banners and maintaining 20-25stacks of Might on a party contributes way way way more DPS to a party than a Signet Warrior with no Banners. However, on a DPS Meter, the Signet Warrior would show to have way more DPS than the Phalanx Warrior (exacerbated even more if the Signet Warrior is present with a Phalanx Banner Warrior) , misleading the player to believe he is the more useful and valuable edition to the team, and would be more likely to ignore direction and advice from a true, more competent, leader of a team. And that’s a DPS example which should be easier for scrub meatheads to understand.

But there’s other examples too that the meatheads will never understand, such as a Guardian with a moderate DPS build who successfully keeps a team clear of conditions (of particular interest, Weakness and Blind), prevents people from going down for longer due to his passive heals, blocks, reflects and group stability, and gets people back on their feet quickly and safely if they do go down ensuring they can carry on dishing out their own DPS, might also be contributing way more to the success and efficiency of a party than the meathead Signet Warrior, though the DPS meter wouldn’t show it and, due to the idiocy of the internet, they’d be no way you could ever convince the meathead Signet Warrior that the Guardian was far more crucial to the teams success than the Signet Warrior because he’d just keep rattling on about how his DPS was twice that of the Guardian (which once again, in part was probably because of the Guardian enabling him to carry on DPSing).

And if you think this meathead mentality isn’t already in-the game, you are wrong. Just look at the LFG listings at anytime, you’ll find some people asking for parties of nearly all Warriors, sometimes even going so far as to forbid other certain classes from attending. Certain classes that actually contribute more to the success and efficiency of a party than multiple Warriors do (and that’s almost every other class in the game, once you already have a single Warrior). But you can’t tell these people otherwise. A DPS Meter would just encourage this dull mentality and that’s a bad thing.

I do the same, I keep one Invisible bag on each of my characters for the reasons described above, in the final slot. They are incredibly useful to storing Quartz, tonics, your food/consumables of choice, and personal alternative gear.

I also keep one Exotic Bag on each character, from Fractals, to store personal gear and exotics (the bag will grab your offhand Exotic if you swap from 2x 1Hs to a 2H weapon), which is also very useful.

Tend to use standard bags for the rest of my bag slots, though on occassion I may use something a bit more specialised, such as a junk-item bag or whatnot (can’t remember their name) in one slot (to help ensure stuff I can’t salvage goes elsewhere), or a rare fractal bag for similiar reasons.

The variety in bags is one of those inventory management things ANet actually got really right with this game, and I’m glad it’s a feature.

I don’t actually like first person camera view in like, any game, however, I do realise it’s usefulness when it comes to accurate targetting, and in the case of GW2, it will be a big help when it comes to those awkward JPs or stacking in corners in Dungeons (where you usually can’t see a bloody thing and have to guess where to swing, also making it difficult to Dodge correctly), so this is good news.

Of course, I’ll be sticking to third person most of the time, so hopefully it will be easy to just switch it between third and first person on the fly just like the ES games.

We should have a DPS meter in-game just to show all those elitist meta PuG Warrior scrubs just how bad their DPS really is compared to most other classes. The irony of this, is that it tends to be this group of players in particular that want something like this to begin with. They’d be tripping themselves up. It’d be funny.

Other than that, as others have mentioned, DPS Meters are a bad idea and should be avoided like the plague. They discourage friendliness , accessibility, and co-operation, and encourage negative playstyles, limit build creativity and originality, and train players in all the wrong things when it comes to actually learning the game and becoming good at it.

Heck, the event system can’t even accurately reward a player for their actual contribution or participation to the success of an event, so a DPS meter would be a disaster when it came truly showing exactly who is good at the game and who isn’t, as they don’t take enough of everything else into consideration.

Wanze.8410:

Watchwork mechanisms are available for under 10g on the tp and you also forgot the mining pick.

Which isn’t as bad as wolfyrik described, but it’s still crazy expensive considering the total amount of Mechanisms you need for a full set of Zealot’s Gear, easily making it one of the most expensive Exotic sets around.

Aye, the accessibility of key farming is questionable at best already, especially since the NPE, and it’s really the only thing keeping the Black Lion Weapon Skins in-check cost wise. If it’s ever to be changed, it certainly shouldn’t be to make it even more limited!

As for BL Key Drops. I’ve had 3 or 4 in total via mob drops, and I’ve been playing since pre-release (and the Betas, but those aren’t connected anyway, so). Somebody told me once that they apparently use the same drop charts as Precursors, with a similar drop chance, which I can definitly believe, considering while I’ve had those 3 or 4 key drops I’ve never had a precursor drop (and only eventually got one in the Mystic Forge after throwing thousands of gold worth of staffs in there).

Point is, the Key Drop chance is so low it would be totally disastrous to the economy and accessibility of Black Lion skins if they removed the ability to farm them via Personal Story speedruns.

Bubi.7942:

Huh… it may be the most profitable after all

It’s not profitable, since the keys are account bound and you can’t sell them for money, you can only sell some of their contents, which are far less valuable in comparison (and you can’t rely on that 0.00001% chance of getting a “permanent [something] contract” for mega-bucks on the TP, those really shouldn’t be factored in).

It’s simply the most efficient in-game (so that’s discounting using real money) way to get the Keys for yourself, that’s all.

Wanze.8410:

KotCR.6024:

As for the recipes for Sentinal’s, Celestial’s and Zealot’s – I’m not sure these still drop. They were only acquirable during their limited time living world events, and now there is a limited supply of recipes for them that have to be purchased on the TP.

Sentinel inscriptions and insignias are available from the guild commendations vendor and you dont need a recipe sheet for the gear.

Oh, ok, well, there’s that, but they still use Azurite right? Which only drops in the Molten Facility fractal. Possibly via the Mystic Forge aswell, but I’m unsure about that.

It is treated differently, in a sense, but as Xiahou mentioned, Zealot’s Gear, Celestial Gear (multi-stat) gear, Nomad Gear (Toughness, Healing, Vitality) and Sentinel’s (primary Vitality, secondary Toughness and Power) are all treated a little differently.

This is because these stat-combination types weren’t always available and were introduced to the game as part of temporarily available living story content (with the exception of Nomad’s gear since Living World Season 2 is far more persistant than the Season 1 stuff).

While you can still acquire the materials required for these stat types they now have a far more limited availability. Now the primary source of income for the parts required for Zealot’s and Sentinal’s stuff is actually specific Fractals (though there is still a JP and a handful of them in WvW for a few extra Aetherblades for Zealot materials), and for Celestial it was the once per-day home instance Quartz node (and the Charged Quartz is still time-gated to one-a-day for the most part), though since Drytop and Silverwastes basic Quartz has become a bit more available.

As for the recipes for Sentinal’s, Celestial’s and Zealot’s – I’m not sure these still drop. They were only acquirable during their limited time living world events, and now there is a limited supply of recipes for them that have to be purchased on the TP.

N.B. Before anybody calls me on it, I realise the recipes are still available in unlimited supply for Ascended level gear, but not for anything less, and it’s unlikely one will have multiple sets of Ascended gear due to the exorborant cost, and will probably just get one ‘zerker or Soldier’s set of that instead of the more specialised stat-sets.

Sometimes being a bit of a horder pays-off; The exotic version of Sam and All Seeing are both highly sought after at the mo thanks to the collectibles update. I’m fortunate enough to own both of these items.

However, I acquired them before the change to Magic Find Gear was introduced (when equipment used to have Magic Find as a stat – these items both used to be +Power, +Precision, +Magic find, and currently give me the choice to select stats instead).

However, despite owning both these items and both items being accound-bound, they have not unlocked for me in their respective collectible title tracks. Is their any way to fix this? It seems like a bug.

As both items are now quite valuable, and I have hung onto them for so long, it would be a shame and unfair to have to repurchase them for collections even though I already own both of them.

The only thing is, in practicality and functionality, a Greatsword and Great Axe are more or less the same. Both are just giant blades that would be too unwieldly to use in much of a different fashion from one another. Unlike 1H Axes and Swords which are small enough to have their own wielding styles.

In this sense, I think it would just be a better move to rename “Greatsword” weapon type to “Greatblade”, and include a variety of Greataxe skins in the current Greatsword skin line-up. Less work for Anet, and would probably increase your chances of seeing two-handed axes in game.

That being said, I would like to see some new weapon types; But if this was going to be done, it would make sense to have it something that is also functionally different from what we already have, to lend more weapon skill variety opportunities, such as Polearms/Poleaxes.

Once again though, it might be easier to just add currently existing weapon types to more professions, if all you want is new skills. Plenty of ways to make that work too.

Frosch.7809:

I appreciate your post, and i agree with it except for one part, and i think you can guess which one that is.

draxynnic.3719:

There’s no reason Rytlock couldn’t get to the Hall of Heroes – it’s not unique to humans. Norn at least can go there as well.

“Jora mentions that the Norn believe that the bravest heroes go to a place called the "Hall of Spirits””, i assume that you refer to this. First, the “Hall of Spirits” may not be the Hall of Heroes (unless there is proof that it is?).

Well, we know from GW1 that Charr are allowed into other realms of the mists; For example their is Charr (and Grawl, and others) in the Realm of Torment in GW1, so it’s within reason they’d be allowed into other realms in the mists too, befitting of their character, and the Hall of Heroes would certainly make sense should they have a suitable character for it.

Though, as you can hide the headgear of either armor or town clothes, then I presume these pieces don’t overlap with multiple slots; It would be nice if they’d at least let us mix armor and town clothes headgear with each other.

I want to wear my Fancy Winter Outfit with a pair of Shades. Because I’m cool like that.

This will probably end up consumed into the big Canthan thread. Regardless…

I’d probably go to Elona first; It’s geomatrically closer to what we currently have (the gate to the Crystal Desert is even right there already at Ebonhawke), and makes more sense from both a technical and lore viewpoint.

For Canthan, we’d have to pass through Bubbles – and it’d be a shame for ANet to pass-up the opportunity to do some full-on water zones and a water-based boss fight with Bubbles, but ANet definetly need more time to fleshout and revamp the underwater combat system. Don’t get me wrong, I like it as it is, at least the base design, but it has very limiting options and iffy balance and could do with much expansion and retweaking before it’s employed in full force for a dragon showdown.

Then continuing from the lore point of view again; On the other side of Kralkatorrik we have Palawa Joko and his army of undead. While Joko is a villainous character, he is the lord of Elona and the orders avoid getting involved in simple politics (and at this point, any Elonian-lead fight against Joko would basically be a rebellion), and would make for a strong ally to aid in the fight against the dragons, and Kralkatorrik would certainly struggle more against a two-pronged attack from both sides. Also, whatever is left of the Order of Sunspears in Elona would make for strong combat companions – afterall, the Sunspears are prooven god-killers – you could use that kind of power and experience against the dragons.

Futhermore, due to Cantha’s xenophobia, the Tyrian Orders would be very unlikely to find an ally in Cantha (considering their ranks are made up of all different species), and it’s actually more likely that they could find an ally in Joko, and it makes sense for the Pact to collect allies against the dragons first, to ensure greater resources for future victories against other dragons, before collecting further enemies.

Guys, Anet already solved the problem of making chest discoveries from exploring worthwhile, and relatively repeatable, without making them too highly farmable. They did it in Guild Wars: Nightfall.

See: http://wiki.guildwars.com/wiki/Treasure
Why, like many of Guild Wars 1’s great design decisions, they decided to abandon it in Guild Wars 2, is beyond me (oh wait…Gem Store).

But just read that article and you can see how it worked, while still being worthwhile and profitible to do once in a while, without being too farmable or hurting the economy too much due to the active DR and 30~ day reset (which of course, after finding one treasure, encouraged you to search the rest of the world for more rather than just opening the same, easily do-able one, every day, like you might do in GW2 for the daily JP achievement).

For bonus points, after reintroducing this system with equally worthwhile rewards, they could add several possible locations for each chest in their attached cave/hidden area with the game randomly picking one each server reset or whatever, the other possible locations being empty, and possibly at harzardous deadends, to add that adventuring feel that Yalora Istairiea tried to describe above, without web browsing access destroying the feeling completely.

Purple Miku.7032

Warrior is literally the only class capable of reaching 100% crit chance by themselves

Nope. Necromancers say hi. They can reach that point much easier than any other class in the game, certainly while solo.

Khal Drogo.9631

Pretty sure Rifle Warrior outDPS longbow ranger. But ranger has a pet of course.

You should include the Pet in the DPS equation though, seems in combat it’s permanently there anyway, and Ranger weapons are deliberately kitten to accommodate pet DPS.

That being said Ranger Longbow has built in AoE-capabilities, unlike Warrior Rifles, though both can be traited to pierce on all attacks. In a group setting, Ranger Longbow is better at stacking high amount of vulnerability (to multiple targets too, with Pierce Trait) than Warrior Rifle, which could lead to more total group DPS.

It also goes without saying that the Ranger Longbow can have more range and does have vastly more utility than the Warrior Rifle, but I would expect the Warrior Rifle to do more-single target DPS seems that’s it niche. Ranged AoE DPS on a Warrior is supposed to come from their Longbow, afterall (which too, has a great deal more utility than the Warrior Rifles, with Firefields, Blast Finishers, et all).

No this irks me aswell. The language is called English (or American English – still has English in the name), for a reason. It’s not called American.

To use the American flag to represent it is counter-intuitive, and to be honest, confusing – when I first saw it appear in the LFG Tool, I thought it meant that that group was forming on the USA servers rather than the European ones and it meant I couldn’t join it.

Only when I advertised a party myself as English-speaking only, did I realise it infact meant that that group was only looking for English-speaking people, but was indeed still on the European servers.

It’d make alot more sense to use the English (or even British) flag to represent it; Especially for the European servers. Most other games (and videos) do (and if they don’t they use a cross-sectioned flag that is half-English/British, half-USA) to represent the English language. Would just be sensible for Anet to follow suite.