It’s all been said before, but melee heavy class needs more tools to melee. Don’t want to make us carbon copies of other classes? Fine. Make us the melee class with less duration on snares, but more powerful snares. Let us chill folks a bit more.
Easiest fix? Glacial Heart should work with all weapon types, and should have a 2s duration on a 10s cooldown. Then, folks who want to invest in one of the 2 different chill sigils for their weapon can get a little bit more chill uptime (still subject to all normal condition removals, so it’s not massively game breaking). With Glacial Heart, the chill on crit sigil, a Guardian could get maybe 4s out of 10s worth of Chill duration, enough for a few attack chains between defense moves and tumbling around.
…besides, I know you want a sword that shoots both fire and ice. We all do. Let’s see if we can’t make this happen.
All in favor?
Thematically, I grew up on sword and shield and that’s how I operate. I’m super in love with the sword attack chain, and the sword teleport.
Zealot’s Defense is terrible though. It does less DPS than a regular attack chain (this is true, stop calling it burst damage), but you gain a bit of range and defense against ranged attacks, right? Well, that would be great except the ranged attacks are absorbed so you don’t trigger block effects, and you’re immobilized for the duration, so in addition to doing less damage than the regular attack chain you’re also only going to land the entire thing against terrible players or in very specific situations, THEN you’re going to be out of range for follow-up attacks. This ability REALLY needs to be reworked. Best fix was if you weren’t rooted while it was activated.
Shield could also use some love. Little heartbroken that our shield also has no “block” mechanics. My dream come true would be if one of the buttons (preferably the short duration protection wave) was replaced with a button that granted you Aegis (this is a shield, after all). 1 application of Aegis on a 30 second timer or 1 AoE Aegis on a 40 or 45 second timer would be super ideal, would have synergy with plenty of Aegis effects in the Guardian kitten nal, and would all around make me a happy camper. Good golly do I want a weapon source of Aegis.
Ah well, even with sub-par abilities on my sword 3 button and on my shield, I’ll continue to rock them because that’s how I roll. If we can’t have good moves, at least we can look good using bad moves.
Can we please change this ability to work with every weapon type, and give a 2s chill on a 10s cooldown?
The base increase of the power would mean that it goes from 16% possible up-time to 20% possible up time (very minor buff), but because it procs more often, we can rely on a melee snare to get an attack rotation off more than once every 30 seconds.
Nuts to torment, I say. What we need is chill. There aren’t a zillion sources of it, outside of Elementalist and Ranger, and melee DPS guardians could use a little something for staying on target.
Besides, if they gave me chill, then I’d have a sword that shoots fire, lightning (sigil of air) and ice. I need that. I need it now.
For Justice!!!!
I’ve always loved being a sword and board hero, since my Dragon Quest days as a lad. My problem is that I’m finding Zealot’s Defense to be borderline unusable in sPvP.
I love the attack chain, as Sword Wave is fantastic.
Flashing Blades is also great. Having a blinding teleport on a ten second timer is very nice.
Zealot’s Defense? Roots me while having too short a range to land more than 1 hit before the target runs out of range. I end up with much better up time if I continue chasing with auto attack. The projectiles it stops don’t count as “blocked” either. Meaning that all our fun burning/block tricks don’t even get synergy with this lackluster move.
Currently we’re one of the few classes without a trait for movement speed. We have to rely on utility slots to grant us swiftness so we can match the inherent speed of others. That’s fine. I can handle that.
We also didn’t get those new, nifty 33% cripple/immob reducing talents like Warriors or Engineers. That’s fine. Whatever. We should be able to cleanse those, right?
Now we’re ALSO woefully short on ways to slow, save a few immobilizes with moderate cooldowns, all of which you have to sacrifice some other utility for, which is rough, as most guardians are trying to melee. Come on guys…doesn’t this seem like a bit much, at this point?
Let’s make a deal. I’ll give you back Zealot’s Defense, you give me a 3 button that cripples, or immobilizes, or something.
Know what? I’ll even keep Zealot’s Defense if you make it mobile and lower the CD by 3 seconds. I’d even consider it if the ranged projectile absorptions actually counted as blocks. Just…SOMETHING.
I’ve been told that as a Guardian, I’m expected to melee and that my options for ranged damage are very limited, so why is actually staying in melee so difficult compared to other classes that I’ve played?
So, yeah. That’s my offer to Anet. I’ll give you Zealot’s Defense, you give me absolutely anything usable. Thanks for your consideration.