Guild Wars 2

You know I have the same exact feeling of satisfaction after some long hours/days/weeks of testing and theory crafting when i do find the build i was aiming for and it works great i feel good. Though i don’t post it on the forums with the intention of not sharing, it makes you kinda look like what Harbinger said.

The Meta is just something that works best currently until something better can be found. IMO Meta builds are discovered and proven builds that work, used as a main attraction or in many cases as a base/staple build for a determined game mode (Dueling, Roaming, WvW Group play, Spvp, etc). It isn’t hard to make a build, but it is hard to make builds that are deemed inefficient, and making them efficient or satisfying to play. In which case every online multiplayer game will have a meta.

Dahir.4158:

If you run around without condition removal it’s your own fault tbh.

Tell that to the condi engineers that cry about getting whooped by Condi necros.

Roe.3679:

mango.9267:

Roe.3679:

Straegen.2938:

Condi does not have to trade off 3 stats for damage only 2. Power players have to take Power, Crit AND Crit Dmg (the now nerfed Ferocity). If condi builds had to go three stat and ANet eases up on the food, then parity would be achieved. As it is now any heavy DPS condi build either stacks toughness or vitality. They can stack both and take a relatively minor hit to overall DPS.

Condition duration, condition damage and precision equals 2 stats. Learn something new every day!

Condition duration isn’t a stat you can get in your armor/trinkets, and a number of builds don’t need any precision to deal good condition damage. It’s undeniable that condition builds give up little to no survivability while maintaining high dps.

However, a mix of bunker and power builds is still superior in group play from 5v5 upwards.

Giver’s stats have been in the game for some time, you should probably know about those. Additionally, power builds don’t need precision to do “good” damage, either, since soldiers builds have always out damaged dire builds.

People keep comparing Soldiers and Dire in damage. People keep saying Soldiers will always out damage dire basing it off of a perfect world where you will always hit your target 100% of the time, and they’re standing still with no protection, no weakness, lowest armor rating as possible , no dodging and essentially AFK. Dire’s damage scales on how many damaging coditions you have, if you have bleeds, burn, poison, just as base for a a condition build(3 damaging conditions are normal base minimum for a sufficient condi build) You already outpace Soldier damage.

Please take a warrior with GS and soldiers gear, and attack someone with protection, or weakness on you.

It’s been sort of a known thing since power vs condi arguement. Engis have the sustain and mobility to deal with 1vX situations unless it’s a necro. Necros only face stomp engineers cause they have both really good controls and conditions. Engineer, mainly condi engi fall face flat against necromancers because they will easily eat condition application faceroll(They have DS and large Health pool) , using things like Consume conditions as well. Not only that, but necro can transfer those bulks of conditions back to the engineer. Which is mainly why Engi dies to necro, control and conditions.

Power damage =instant but decreases overtime if you do not continue contact with your direct damage. Most of the high damage is dealt at Melee range. Though to seriously put it it wasn’t comparable to conditions because you can’t keep up contact 100% of the time as melee unless the person is Afk or standing still. This is why Zerker LB ranger is considered OP now since RF fires much faster now and will pretty much always hit it’s target if traited with Read The Winds(You can’t side step/move side to side to evade arrows anymore). For consistent high direct damage. The only way to really mitigate/counter this is to have minions body block, LoS/Terrain, or reflect/block AoE.

Condition damage=Overtime but your brick of damage is unleashed in a stream that can’t be blocked, dodged, LoS, or invulnerability mitigation once applied. This means someone can just apply many damaging conditions, kite/ run away. The only counter to this is condition removal, sure well timed condition removal will help you survive much longer but consistent overload will eventually kill you if you do not kill the applicator. In Engineer’s case sustain/Mobility and blocks. Tool tip burning for me on my condi engi’s IP will do 6-8k damage over time if not removed and allowed to tick for its entire duration of 8s(Mind you i run balth runes and 4-6 points in explosives), with a ICD of 10s.

EvilSardine.9635:

If both players are equally skilled a warrior will never be able to beat a guardian using scepter/focus+GS. Doesn’t matter what build or weapon setup the warrior uses.

Don’t bother. In fact, I’m pretty sure my friend can beat any warrior using just his scepter/focus. It’s pretty sad.

Guardians have a lot of blinds, aegis, blocks, an invuln, teleports, boons, protection, and crazy amounts of damage. A warrior just cannot deal with it.

That Scepter doe, nevermind that you can walk side to side and make over half the projectiles miss. scepter too broken! Smite does nothing if the person doesn’t sand in it. One Invulnerability through Renewed Focus I don’t call that a lot of Invulnerability access..

Also please list what skills a mediguard has that gives them lots of protection and other boons? Because the only way a guard will have access to protection is to run a shout, or slot 1 in Virtues for a VoC active to give 5-6s protection on a 80-90s CD

@OP My suggestion for you is to use Signet of might over something like Signet of Dolyak since Guards have nonexistent CC aside from Binding Blade if they roll GS. You will render Shelter(30s CD) and Shield of Wrath (45s CD) Null. I run GS Axe/Shield and it does help quite a bit when it’s 1v1. Without blocks Mediguard is pretty squishy.

I don’t know why people keep complaining about guards, they got nothing but buffs from this patch yes, but they’re still in the same spot. A 2k heal on Renewed Focus when you trait for meditations is hardly broken as reduced CD. The main features of guardian buffs this patch was Glacial Heart ICD reduction, and Spirit Weapons usability. Spirit Weapons now aren’t required to invest 4 in Zeal just so you can use the command skill (Spirit Weapons used to die if you used the command skills without the trait). Guardian is balanced by the fact you sacrifice for what you want to do. If you want to bunker support you give up alot of offensive power. You want to be offensive you give up a lot of defensive power and group support( by going meditations). They also have glaring weakness of being really slow, kiteable , not having much soft CC, and hard controlling effects. So really i don’t understand how any of the changes really made Guardians over the top.

Something is OP.
We’re not OP.

While I do like the buff to rapid fire, I will comparing it to other skills isn’t exactly fair. It does get annoying if you ever do get focused by 2 LB rangers. Most of those other bursts you see and compare to rapid fire are melee ranged, Eviscerate has a tell and a obvious animation, Shatter mesmers need to have clones around you for Mind Wrack, and blurred frenzy is melee range as well, backstab is melee and needs to hit your back to do double damage.. 1500 Range with Read the winds means you’re not going to side step all the arrows cause of bad tracking. You’re doing the same damage as a melee zerker build but without much of the risk of being in the fray and getting hit. THe only thing that will ruin your day is someone gets close is a condi build. If it’s another melee character you have chance to burst them still cause GS 5 + Moment of Clarity -> Maul can go over 10k damage easy, and GS4 parry hits pretty hard too, about 4k. Which is no problem to deal with. My suggestion for everyone is to exploit LoS and use projectile absorption/Reflections (Sorry necro), from skills or traits.

I’m just going to throw this out there since I’ve been playing a GS/Axe/Shield burst build. Eviscerate will hit harder just because it’s single target, and single target damage has to be higher than the AoE version(Arcing slice) otherwise why take Evis over Arcing strike?. Now., one thing to note is no matter what bar level of adrenaline you have you will hit for the same amount of damage as you would a at any adrenaline level with the new Arcing Slice. More bars of adrenaline only translates to longer fury times. It is also much more usable than the old Arcing slice which was very awkward and hard to land.

You guys should try and keep SoR on Passive, it’s quite a nice way to gain adrenaline, mixed with weapon swapping :> and hitting people. People are also forgetting that SoR’s passive was buffed by 50% to compensate for the 5s reduction on the three skills.

I’ve picked it up because Ranger everywhere. Make them eat their own Long Shots and and Rapid Fire. So i’ll see pretty well.

Eiland.1405:

Saiyan.1704:

Lucentfir.7430:

Supposedly we’re becoming Op now cause of the Renewed Focus to meditation change, and we have too much damage and sustain. Starting to pop up on various areas of the forums :/

-Meditations grant Fury.
-Your meditations recharge 20% faster.
-You are healed when you use a meditation.

Basically we get an extra 2k heal every 72 seconds. How exactly does this make us op? :/
They wont nerf us until they see med guards in tournaments (which they want) and doing significantly better (which we wont).

I don’t even play guard anymore and I can tell that you forget the fact that the skill itself is getting a lowerd CD. That means -18 sec on full immune and -18sec on 3 condi clears and party aegis.
And lol at the guy at thread start who did not even figured that the skill is getting the lower CD. Real pros here at guard forum :P

Med guard was already in good place so it kinda safe bet to say that this change will take them to top tier at least for duelling aspect.

Yes because all Medi guards spec 4 into virtues or go a build route looking like 2/1/6/1/4. I was clearly aware, of RF getting a lower CD, but that isn’t actually basis to becoming broken.. Rangers got their entangle on a much lower CD, and Warriors can trait to have their elites be 48 sec on SoR, even thieves have this with Venoms(Basilisk).

Duel wise you’ll still get mowed over by a engineer celestial/Condi, or a skilled perplexity Terrormancer. And Variations of Ele D/D ele that are not full blown glass.

Edit:
@Bolded Semtence
https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/professions/balance/medi-guards-replace-warrior/first#post4349907

Mhm right….totally forgot it’s getting a CD! These posters now a days :>

Devon.9061:

Anyone else Renewed Focus not working with the media traits or is this just a tool bar issue? The only one that seems to effect it for me is the reduced cool down.

It should pop at the end of Renewed focus, after you do the entire channel.

nicknamenick.2437:

cry over warrior? they are in a horrible place right now.

And no this patch doesnt made guardian suddenly OP.. they where already very good (medi guards) and yes this patch did buff them even more.

If you compared guard with other classes i can say you they have too much burst for the amount of sustain they have.

And dont come with the argument, if you get target and 3 man jump on guard they just dead.. every class if dead when multiple jump on 1.

Escape tools are what people are referring too when you get jumped by three people. You’re not going to be able to get out of it. Our burst is over channeled duration Zealot’s defense , WW they are also multi hit. Chill, and poison application will hamper guardian meditation guard pretty badly. Guardians are kiteable inherently slow with no access to swiftness unless you use Staff or Retreat. Almost non-existent soft CC. People are saying Warrior is in a bad place now, but the good ones are still playing just fine. There’s actually a thought process of counting dodges. The same builds that beat medi guardian before the patch can till beat guardian now. Nothing has changed much.

Exedore.6320:

Hexalot.8194:

Dumbest idea ever. Unlike warriors, Medi-Guards have no way of leaving the fight if things go south… they are “in it to win it” in every sense of the phrase. And when you factor in one of the lowest base healths of all classes, you can understand why Guards need every bit of sustain they can get.

Yet you want to nerf one of the most vital things keeping Guards in the fight… their healing ?

I repeat… dumbest idea EVER ! (and I don’t even main a guard and normally don’t see medi’s as that much of a threat). Which means we can probably look for this recommendation to implemented next patch !

QQ, don’t nerf me, I like ez mode!

I play a guardian, I’ve played medi in the past, I’ve played against medi guards as other professions. I laugh every time I see one and then sigh in frustration as they continually try to hurt me, fail miserably, yet never die. You simply avoid their burst and they can’t do crap to hurt you. But they live forever in smaller fights and that healing has next to no counter-play. The change to renewed focus makes that zero-skill aspect of medi guard even worse.

Again, nerf the healing on Monk’s Focus to get rid of the* zero counter-play sustain *and then add options for offense which require more thought and execution. Then they can actually be a threat and be more than that fly you can’t shoo away. It makes for a much better build and a much more enjoyable game (unless you like your ez mode builds).

Poison and chill do not exist….NOPE, totes not counterplay! Neither do hard CC stun locks or soft CC + Kitting! Obviously the 2k heal on guard’s Renewed Focus is too much, which heals at the end of the channel. If you’re playing as a Warrior, that Signet of Might looks mighty handy against those pesky blocks! Meditation Guards have a pretty sizable advantage over certain builds but it’s not even the real majority. Team Fights they will go down if focused, or AoE, Spvp Bunker guard will remain the most useful until more competitive game modes are introduced.

sinject.4607:

medi-guard does a bit too well against other dps builds. it’s fine everywhere else for the most part, but playing medi-guard against dps ranger, thief, mesmer, ele, etc feels easier than it should

Those classes can still kite a guardian, unless the guardian is using Speed or Traveler’s Runes. Even then, if a guardian initiates with Shield of Wrath, judges Intervention, and WW, if you can’t see that then hey it happens. That combo is the equivalent to a Churning Earth Ele with Lightning Flash. Not to mention initiation with JI means they’re down 36-kitten CD heal and gap closer.

EvilSardine.9635:

I’ve been saying this forever. Warriors will lose EVERY fight against the classes you just listed as long as the players are equally skilled.

The really OP as hell class are meditation DPS guardians. The amount of blocks, blinds, protection, regen, overall sustain, and damage they put out is insane. You can straight up scepter number 1 warriors to death. No lie.

Medi guards have good access to protection and Regen? Unless they swap a meditation with a shout, and put 1 point in virtues they don’t have much protection at all, just blinds, blocks and dodges. Here’s a trick to scepter since it’s qute lackluster and slow, if you’re at ranged move side to side over half the projectiles will miss because of bad tracking. if you’re having trouble with blocks 1v1 grab Signet of might, since guards do not have Hard CC or soft CC unless they have hammer or Binding Blade on GS. You can do away with Dolyak Signet, since you don’t need the stability against them. Not to mention unless they are running traveler’s runes, they are slow, very slow.

Yes nerf meditation guard’s heals because they can go get 5 meditations on their skill bar and popping them all for a 10k-12k heal~, because you know popping them all at once is a very wise idea. Popping CoP when you have no Conditions and renewed focus when you don’t really need it! Placing them on a a semi lengthy CD. Spvp wise Bunker guard is still going to be better than medi guard in those scenes just because of the support and healing/bunkering they do is very potent and crucial in holding points. Which is what Spvp is all about competitively. Shouts are fine where they are, they don’t need a change or a buff because they aren’t bad, and they fulfill their roll.

coglin.1867:

BurrTheKing.8571:

AnonMD.7263:

BurrTheKing.8571:

AnonMD.7263:

words

more words

some other words

Worse. Even though with the trait is could almost be a full cleanse, it doesn’t heal enough for that CD for it to be useable.

Actually both heals are quite good. The problem is we are completely spoiled on the signet. And to be honest, there is not reason not to use it.

I really do like Healing Surge, and Mending, though there are times you wish you had signet because all that health you gained back just dropped back again in the face of AoE, and pokes, and that poison application means you either have to use your burst and hit to cleanse, and get a much lower heal again, or use it and watch that large heal turn into a small one when poison eats 33% of it. Mending atm should be base like 7-8k heal to make it worth using over Healing surge. That’s my opinion though.

@Dancingmonkey
It’s much harder to play a Healing Surge warrior over a HS warrior. The heal is based off of how much adrenaline you’ve made while fitting and the heal itself is based on when you hit the button, when you need to use it get a satisfying heal you’ll need Full Adrenaline to hit that mark. So the heal itself is pretty impractical and inconsistent since every situation is different. Comparing to every other class, a lot of those other classes tend to stay at range and /or have protection boons or damage mitigation traits, blocks or evades. Mixed with sustain. Running Healing Surge you have no sustain except Adrenal health which is also based on adrenaline and increments of 3 seconds. The only situation where you won’t want HS on your bar are burst heavy focus, or Poison and burning and condi frequent application.

Mending can be a full cleanse however it needs to be traited to do that, not to mention that 6k heal on a class with no sustain outside of HS along with 60s CD direct damage immunity and condition prevention. Doesn’t really help your situation.as much.

The one thing I will agree on is the damage at 50% is nearly the same as a old arcing slice, it just became more usable and likely to hit with the cleave. The damage needs to be tweaked abit…..right now my 1-2 adrenline bar eviscerate does more damage than my three bar Arcing Slice on foes below 50%. In a sense the skill doesn’t feel like a executioner ability, in sense the skill should be use on foes below 30% if you really want to finish them.

Wall of Reflection will be quite hilarious to run now, but yes the damage …I’m loving it but now I just feel kinda cheat gibbing people caught in the open without mitigation tools xD

Some of you may or may not know about this but I’ve been using arching slice…it seems you can get a full clear of conditions as in a bar full if you have multiple enemies around you and you hit them, or 3 condis per person hit if you have three bars. I noticed it when i got rooted and slammed with a bar full of conditions rangers and mesmer clones everywhere, used it, my bar became condi free. But in any case neat bug

Huck.1405:

I’m gonna wait and see, but if the Warrior class has been overly beaten by the nerf stick I’ll probably shelve him and make my Guardian my main char. Until the Guardian gets mega nerfed, which I’m sure is coming.

Good luck with that, a lot of people with this mind set will go back to playing Warrior or another class after they realize the trade offs of what . Also if you’re talking about playing a medi guard, it’s not a walk in the park as many seem to think, maybe against people who’ve played PVE for a majority of their game time, but against more experienced players, have fun.

Edit: One more thing to note, what you plan to do in shelving Warrior, who’s supposedly your main, and making guard your main, is not maining, that’s called riding the FotM wave, in sense you don’t really have a main to begin with. You just play the stuff that’s FotM on top of the food chain of classes. If you really mained warrior you’d stick to the class, even after nerfs, because you love the class, not because it’s on top.

fellyn.5083:

Because nerfing adrenaline is going to encourage build diversity.

It’s going to do exactly the opposite. Guess what you’ll be seeing from 98% of the warriors after the patch? Longbow. Yep, that build diversity.

As for eleses and lack of build diversity being locked to 1 weapon as one of your counter-points….there you go.

And necros have conditions. Conditions which can prevent other classes (warrior) from landing their important skills. Which wouldn’t you know it, is defensive. It’s almost like that’s how it’s meant to be, or something.

Then they’ll realize that LB won’t compliment the play style of their build, and start to think of reworking their build. Some will probably start going Brawler’s Recovery, Cleansing Ire route while others might resort to Lyssa runes. LB is nice and all, but if you’re just taking it so you can just expend adrenaline whenever you have 3 bars to clear 3 conditions, and messing with the flow of your build, it’ll normally end with a unsatisfied feeling that you put on yourself.

PSh I’m still going to play my Warriors, the only thing this is going to affect is FotM(Flavor of the month) players and when i mean affect I mean they’re going to move to another FotM class. What this change for warrior is going to do is make it require a lot more skill and thought about Adrenaline management, instead of using your burst skill every time it’s off CD.

Charak.9761:

Harbinger.8637:

The way I see it, there’s going to be a lot of fotm players playing med guard to see how it goes. After playing for a bit they realize med guard isn’t as great and easy to play as people make it out to be. Sure it counters some professions and builds very well, but it also has a lot of hard counters too. So they go back to playing whatever easy fotm faceroll builds they where playing before.

that gets confusing to say flavor of the month when this game has fractal of the mist.

Yes medi is a useless PvE build (good for solo though, even WvW solo)

but medi is shut down so hard by people who can kite.

Of course, however a lot of Warriors are starting to complain now (lol) that we have too much damage and blinds for them to compete, even though a WP’d Warrior can still beat a meditation guardian. It’s just people are complaining now since their class got nerfed but ours got buffed. They’re even suggesting nerfs like reducing LoF’s damage, nerfing Fiery Wrath, also supposedly we have spammable defenses as a meditation guard.

Supposedly we’re becoming Op now cause of the Renewed Focus to meditation change, and we have too much damage and sustain. Starting to pop up on various areas of the forums :/

Hoaxintelligence.4628:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0070IcKe7Ek

watch me handle conditions using -40condi food, dogged march, cleansing ire.
Everyone can handle conditions. Unless you suck.

That doesn’t look like a condi mesmer to me……lol….

Yamsandjams.3267:

Lucentfir.7430:

I’ve actually gone around making a physical utility build, and tbh it’s fine where it is, also people don’t know it but youn can easily hit for 3k+ with kick when you have the trait. I’ve played around with it and made complete lockdown combos :>

I’ve done such a build too.

The main issue is that you’re giving up other things that are of incredible value for something that has comparably less effect. For instance, slotting physical skills means you might not have room for berserker stance, which leaves you inherently more vulnerable to condition builds. You also wouldn’t be able to get that on demand adrenaline. Now you’ll have to dedicate other parts of your build to condition removal and adrenal gain since your physical skills are not facilitating that. The other alternative is to try to manage without those facets, but those can present big gaping holes in your defenses that will cause you to lose where another build more in tune with the meta would’ve worked much better.

They’re also not directly empowering your allies, and your physical skills can even knock the enemy into a position that is inconvenient for your allies (i.e. kicking a stack of mobs).

Futhermore, stability will directly counter a lot of what makes physical skills useful in the first place, and such lockdown combos can easily be broken out of with a single blind, blink, or stun break (even one without stability).

It’s kind of the same deal with things like mesmer and guardian signets (healing ones excluded). Yeah, they can do stuff, but the things you give up for them tend to be much more valuable or applicable in more situations.

A good way to maybe implement the physical skills is as some part of a team combo attack. For instance, you can use a deliberate CC rotation that your allies know so that they won’t be thrown off by random knockbacks and can focus the enemy down properly. But what would be the real reason to trait in this case? The damage boost wouldn’t be that important on the physical skills since they’re for CC primarily, and you wouldn’t need to be constantly spamming the skills as much as possible to need the cooldown reduction.

I’ve fit zerker stance into my build, the only problem this build really is it’s just 1 stunbreaker and no Endure Pain(Logic behind this is why would I need a 60s CD for 4 seconds of direct damage immunity when I can stunlock/CC people to prevent action in the first place) CD . But I don’t really need endure pain when i have shield for blocks, the only form of Stability I have in the build too is Rampage, and Rampage is pretty good for a elite as long as you don’t run into a corruption necro. Or lots of boon removal aimed at you As far as the other Physical utilites go they are just CC but the 100% damage boost helps out with damage to make it not suck, if i take kick I can easily crit for 3k on one kick and follow up with a hammer stun/Backbreaker. Stability counters Physical utilites and condi removal effects throw bolas, however if you watch your opponents boon bar you can wait until stability runs out before going about againwith CC. At most everyone has 3 stunbreakers max, the build I use has 6+ Hard control skills with healthy amount of cripples and immobilizes from sword. I can kill other warriors even with stability. People seems to have this on going thing where they think Stability=I win boon against hard CC/Hammer, frankly that’s not the case, it’s a boon that opens up a window for you to do things without getting interrupted, and that can quickly turn on you if it gets corrupted. Full stances=Damage mitigation for a set period of time with a long CD. Comparing Kick to something like Endure pain, i could kick someone up to four times before Endure pain’s CD is back up if I use it every time it came off CD. That’s opens up a lot of opportunities to stunlock someone and get them downed, or if someone without stability is going for a stomp. Physical utilites are good with the right build, just not every build.

I’d take a shot at a few duels between one of these two, I’m confident in my dueling abilities :>. Just out of experience with both classes and they way he played, he plays like a lot of other warriors I see roaming around in wvW. The only warriors that prove difficult in beating is a M/Sh GS build(wp’d), and Axe/Sword LB Celestial build.

I’ve actually gone around making a physical utility build, and tbh it’s fine where it is, also people don’t know it but youn can easily hit for 3k+ with kick when you have the trait. I’ve played around with it and made complete lockdown combos :>

Poplolita.2638:

@Raven

I would like to point out a misconception you seem to have. Dot/condition classes/builds have more surviviability than power classes/builds because it compliments their small ramp up playstyle. Without surviviability, they will pretty much become power build with no burst but with worse surviviability. This is basically how it works in every MMo out there.

I can understand that play style, however do you think that there can ever be a time where there’s too much survivability? For what some of these builds put out?

I’m just curious to ask, but when you do your maths to try and compare soldiers to dire builds, what exactly do you use for testing? Are you testing on mobs? Or actual players who move around? Because in actual gameplay against another person there are too many variables for perfect math to be any sort of proof.

Retaliation only gets scary when 3-4 people have it, and you’re using multi hitting AoE. That’s the only time it gets scary, but against a single person, it’s really not that scary.

Relevant to the topic. They have multiple ways of bursting yes, and I am one of the people that puts points into honor. However if you look at what guardians have, which is low mobility, and very little soft CC. You compare damage traits to that of a warrior, and don’t realize that the line has a grandmaster for 15% damage for max adrenaline, and a 10% damage boost trait to GS, meaning you can get a whopping 28% Damage boost total from that line. The max any guardian can get from the Zeal line is 15%. Fiery Wrath is harder to maintain unless you have torch, in which case you gave up blind condi removal and 3 block shield.

Guards have no lockdown to make the target eat burst compared to a warrior with Shield bash Eviscerate combo which will easily crit for 10k Damage in a single hit against squishy characters. JI + SoW is one of the most obvious combo initiations in the game, next to Churning Earth so if you get hit by it it’s what you get. To further compare Guards to Warriors where you shouldn’t, Warriors have lots of access to CC and there are many weapons that provide soft cc. They also have mobility and good access to swiftness without costing a arm or leg.

Guard has a better chance to survive as a zerker build true, with the use of blocks and blinds, but that’s all active defense and not passive. This makes all of guardian’s ways of sustaining and surviving skill based. Opposed to HS Passive such.

Yes please nerf guardian, remove the extra damage when you use it when it clears a condition and increase the CD to at least 35s, because it’s way too potent, and remove the boons from Symbols, and lower the damage on 3rd chain attack on sword. Way too potent. Guardians have too much survivability and damage! Leap of Faith needs a nerf too since it does too much for such a low CD skill. Make it travel half the distance and reduce the damage by 30%. Reduce Monk’s Focus so it only heals for 1400! And it will be fair! The Guardian SoW+JI is so unpredictable, as well as all their burst! You can’t see it coming. Too much gaiez, too much. Make it so everyone can live with 50% -75% HP when they happen to make you eat those full bursts! Pls Anet nerf guardians damage and make sure they can’t apply any pressure to anyone, so they can only bunk!

Zefrost.3425:

dancingmonkey.4902:

No seriously, show us a damage log, not an inaccurate tool tip that does no actual damage in game.

http://oi60.tinypic.com/2rruzdh.jpg
http://oi58.tinypic.com/5br6nr.jpg
http://oi57.tinypic.com/2ng95yf.jpg

^ Glacial heart wasn’t taken because it had a long CD before proccing, as well as some builds not using hammer. Glacial Heart though does do great damage with chill. There’s your proof. FYI Damage log is the last link.

If you’re running Zerkers , scepter helps makes this fight much easier to manage. I’ve been able to down D/D eles but it’s mostly because of scepter/ranged option. You will lose if you go double melee, unless the Ele makes big mistakes and doesn’t play smart.

Abe Kleine.3568:

Anet’s response to all other builds except Meditation build
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=M5QGkOGZubQ

Spirit Weapons become usable now since i don’t have to trait 4 points in zeal to make them stay alive for using active use. Shout Builds are already quite potent, and Amplified Wrath Power condi hybrid builds work well. The only thing really needed are decent ranged options, and Shield buffs (Reduced CD).

The only real thing this is going to change is people starting to use Merciful Intervention in Meditation builds. Renewed Focus with the meditation traits makes it better, Lower CD (72s) a 2k emergency heal/virtue bomb, with fury. Other than that I don’t see how this makes it Op now. The rest of the stuff is glacial heart, tome and SW buffs so they’re much more attractive to use. A over all good buff.

I’d say keep it the way it is as far as activating it goes. There’s no reason to make it insta cast aside from it getting the meditation tag. it’ll do plenty good with the added 2k heal add on it.

I really like what they did for Medi guard with Renewed focus, though a large influx will appear that also means new and bad bad medi guardians will appear all over the place. Easy food for anyone that knows the combos as well as smart in their play ;3

Black Box.9312:

Sykper.6583:

As you said, Guardians are without peer the best at condition removal and being tanky innately across all their builds.

They’re not tanky or good at allied condi removal innately across all builds. You have to trait defensively for that.

^

Want to be a great party condi clearer, triple shout build, 6 in honor and 4 in virtues. Initially survivability is low without Monk’s focus or Healing power with 3 in honor. Tanky comes from gear and, traits and protection access. So you suffer somewhere else if you want to be tanky and clear condis teamwide.

Wtb Warrior Hammer stunlock and loads of soft cc. Decent swiftness without having to lose a arm and leg for it.

Volrath.1473:

Wyrden.4713:

they r fixing it if u pay attention, the adrenaline nerf is gonna be a rly huge nerf, ik that, i dont even play warrior.

I disagree, with the change to adrenaline, abilities will also build adrenaline faster so even if you fail an attack and dump your adrenaline, by the time the CD is over you will have full adrenaline to try it again. The only thing they did was deny warriors from having a second full adrenaline ability available if they missed the first one, by switching weapons, that’s all.

this change and the adrenaline decay should have been there since launch, anyway, better late then never.

Miss your burst skill, lose the adrenaline to cleanse yourself with Cleansing Ire. As a result you cannot swap to a second weapon set and use the burst skill on that set, since adrenaline will be empty. Zerker stance will only fill 3 bars of adrenaline now, and adrenaline gain is slow unless you’re running Axe with the trait. Now there’s a incentive to pick up the grandmaster in Strength line as well as to keep Signet of Rage on passive.

My build just got much stronger with these changes x3

Until we get more competitive PvP game modes, guardian will remain where they’re at currently. A point holder bunker support.

Drarnor Kunoram.5180:

What I was getting at is that you were talking about the playstyle as if it were somehow a “condition” playstyle. It isn’t. It’s a ranged playstyle adopted just as much by Power builds as Condition.

ANet has been making good progress on making general mobs much more condition-friendly. Then they make bosses like the recent Shadow of the Dragon who become ten times harder if you don’t have burst damage because of the very limited time you have to actually hurt him (and before he cleanses all conditions, btw). Or bosses like the Watchknights where for half the battle, presence of conditions was important, but the conditions themselves weren’t. When you have the entire mob getting an additional 20% damage (yeah, bet you forgot those bosses had a debuff that increased the direct damage they took by 2% per condition on them during that phase) plus vulnerability stacks (so +50% damage if multiplied seprately, +45% if multiplied together), of course that section will comparably fly by. This was not a condition-friendly boss. Even on the marionette, conditions were of questionable usefulness. The strongest point was the 5th phase where Epidemic necros could make the fight much easier, but really any heavy AoE would do it.

And no, Clerics build staff Guardian is much preferred in most PvE content over condition builds due to the sheer strength of Empower. 12 stacks of Might AoE is very desirable regardless of the stats behind it.

Fair enough, however, Cleric guardian hits like a wet noodle, and eles and warriors bring much more might stacking in longer durations than a staff guardian who’s empower has to be channeled for 2 and a half seconds for 10s duration of might(without boon duration). cleric guard with staff AA mashing is not going to contribute more than a condition build full Condi damage build. Especially if it’s things like dredge with protection, or high armor mobs and bosses. You can also take for the LS achievements instances with Mordrem husks where you’re basically hitting those things for nothing. Condition specs will perform and contribute much better than a cleric’s staff guard.

Drarnor Kunoram.5180:

Regarding PvE, I’m aware it’s only the elitist groups that kick condition builds. Still, direct damage is completely superior in 99% of PvE content. However, the Watchknights were actually the worst example you could have brought up. The damage amplification on the conditions phase only counted if a condition was on the watchknight, with zero regard for strength. Most professions have a “bleed on crit” trait (and frequently, it’s a Minor trait), Vulnerability and Cripple get stacked as part of numerous auto-attacks. Guardians can’t help but apply burning. Nearly max output was achieved through accident, rather than some dedicated condition players. Heck, condition builds were best to sit the whole event out because they were worse than useless for half the fight and getting overridden anyway by the power builds for the other half.

As for WvW roaming, the D/P thief is still the most common roamer. P/D presence is a fraction of the Power thieves. Engineers could be running almost anything (Power, condition, hybrid) and Warriors are more often Axebow right now than S/S condi. You may notice the condition builds more, but they are, in fact, still the minority.

And for what you described with condition build playstyle, that’s not “condition build,” That’s “ranged.” Longbow rangers and Rifle Warriors do the same while condi engineers usually run bomb kit, so are forced to melee (same as S/S Warriors).

That still doesn’t change anything about PVE, PVE is a for fun and story, no one really cares if it’s lesser than a a power build unless they’re speed running so it’s pointless to state that. Also it’s much worse to run a Clerics build with a staff guardian than a condi damage build. The point about The Watchknights is if there was solely only direct damage the fight would have been really slow, when the condition phase comes up you notice the pick up in speed. Though this doesn’t change for the marionette where conditions were also useful. Even the new mobs Mordrem foes, the husks are better dealt with conditions.

Might be server based but a large percentage of thieves i see in WvW are P/D condi thieves, and I know they’re condi theives just by the fact that they steal to me I get 5 stacks of confusion, and a chunk of my health gone which means he’s also running mug. Along with the fact i get interrupted more confusion,a nd when i hit him/her it’s 3 stacks, and i’ve seen these thieves pack D/P on the second set for on demand stealth with BP+ HS.

Engies that run hybrid run rifle, and most pure condi specs run P/Sh and you can easily find out what build they run based on the burn damage, 500+ Means they’re hybrid, 800+ Is condition build.Most roaming condi engineers run torment sigil as well. Warrior Axe/Sword LB is more found in Spvp rather than WvW roaming, just by the fact Axe/Bow has no mobility at all. At most it’s a dueling build in OS. In which case it’s a hybrid build with might stacking.

The playstyle is for the majority of condition builds, Engineer, PU condi mesmer, P/D thief that steals in and shadow steps out with the 3 skill for torment, Condi trap ranger, Necro condi is dual ranged weapons with AoE. Are you telling me none of these are ranged playstyle with application and surviving? Engi survive pretty kitten well with great sustain, and bomb kit is easy to use, drop them and run while the melee person chases you until he breaks off and then you switch back to ranged. So a majority of condi specs are ranged playstyle. Zerker longbow ranger is a perfect example of a ranged playstyle and Rifle warrior as well, if you close in on them there’s not much they can do except try to distance themselves from you halting dps, before trying to range you again because glass cannon.

@Drarnor

I will just throw these out there not putting up a argument. Some insight on a view of things.

PVE - That only happens when you’re trying for the pro elite speedrunners squad who try to complete dungeons the fastest to get the reward faster. If you don’t remember how the LS Assault on Lion’s Arch in Season 1 with the watch nights and the marionette phases Condition specs were actually accepted because they helped out a lot during those fights. Watchnights were brutally slow when conditions weren’t present and being reflected back, but when they were allowed again it sped things up. So the only reason you would get kicked is if you were doing dungeon for speed runs.

Spvp - They’re a bit more balanced there since stats and duration are limited without food. Conditions do help take down bunkers with poison, and things that bypass armor, but main reason why it doesn’t flourish in the top area of tournaments is because it takes too long to kill someone when the point of the gamemode is obviously to cap points but if you’re a condition corruption necro on the other hand with corruption it helps out a lot, against boon stacking. There’s also the things such as Spvp being barred off from perplexity runes and foods. If there were other competitive game modes this might change.

WvW - Blobs, conditions and everything fly around and get cleansed. power builds accumulate to total power of the zerg meaning a bunch of soldier gear wearers will lump their non-critting damage together. Opposed to conditions having to wait for their damage to tick as well as being cleansed by numerous variables of the blob. So condition builds will always be behind power builds in the scene of blobbing unless most of the other blob is scattered and the back lines are getting bombed.

WvW Solo Roaming - About 70% of the time now a days you will find a P/D Condi theif, a PU mesmer, condi engi, or perplexity terror necro. These builds dominate the roaming meta, with access to more runes and stats and a cheap(price) +40% Condition duration food opposed to the overpriced -condition duration food.No one roams in majority soldiers gear for a reason, and almost everyone who does gets their behind handed to them, unless the people they’re fighting are really bad, and still new to the game. There are also tons of ways to mitigate burst and direct damage, via weakness, protection, armor etc.

WvW havoc/small group roaming - They do just fine in this area and it’s any group’s game when it comes to group vs group, it comes down to who’s more coordinated with each other.

On another note. Things like 1 stack of bleeding will tick for over 1k damage over time, that’s 1 auto attack from a direct damage build, now include multiple damaging conditions and more stack, and over time this will easily eat through anyone’s health pool. Most condition builds are ranged, so all you have to do is focus on applying, surviving and making sure you aren’t hit much keeping your distance. Until your foe gets downed by the whole board of condition. The only thing that counters conditions out right are Condition removals, so unless you spec a good portion of your build, sigils or runes into removing conditions (which you should), you run on a timer until you die, while trying to kill some tanky condi spec that kites you. And – Condition duration is a scarce stat, which is only achieved by runes, food, and a few selection of profession traits.

This is just insight post why conditions appear OP in the eyes of others. Most power builds sacrifice defense or offense to do whatever they desired the build was made for, and some people view Condi specs getting the best of both worlds killing power, and good defense. Though it’s true, not all condition builds are OP, just a selection of popular condition specs. Actual play and throwing out numbers are two different things, crunching numbers works for PVE because enemies will always stand still and eat the damage, against other players however there are too many variables to consider damage math.

Addyrol.6497:

4/10. To me, you wouldn’t stand out in any crowd. just too plain.

That was kind of the point, I don’t like all the huge flash and glare holographic wings/glowing bladed back piece with mash up of particle armor that makes no sense or theme, but to stand out as a edgy particle character to be noticed among the crowd . Though that’s fine. :P

Well i’m glad I still have RP (Whatever remains of it) that goes on in my game time. While everyone else is complaining about not having anything to do after they rounded out whatever they set their time on. The LS is good enough for me to keep playing as long as the story is semi decent, and releases new areas at a reasonable rate.

See you in a week or two OP.