Guild Wars 2

The new wastebasket has arrived, time to pitch some ideas in it.

A higher health pool is not a handicap. Ever. Well, unless you run scholars runes.

Class: Med Guard (and sometimes condi guard, what can I say, I must be a masochist)

Hate List:

1: Bomb Bunker Nade Condi Cheese rolled in cheese stuffed with cheese placed in a cheese wrapper and slapped between two cheese buns engi. God I hate them.

2: Minions. Oh yeah, and I suppose the necro they brought along with them.

3: Mesmers. I don’t even care what kind. They are not just annoying, they were designed to be annoying.

Not getting into class by class balance (has been discussed to death already), but some game balance as a whole.

Passives, Actives, and Skill Type!

The power of skills should be determined by the type of skill it is.

Signets:
Signet passives should be at the bottom of this list, all signet passives should be very weak. Signet actives should be much stronger but slightly weaker than standard utilities that have no passive benefit.

Summons:
Summons should be fairly weak as well, though arguably stronger than signet passives as they must be summoned first. Summon Actives should destroy the item/creature and have a substantial effect, about on par with a signet active.

Instant Cast:
All instant cast skills that can be used without fear of interrupt should be stronger than signet and summons, but weaker to skills with cast times.

If the game followed these rules, you could still have some passive play, but it would always be inferior to riskier more active play when executed correctly.

Size and Readability!
I ‘think’ the devs are looking into some size scaling, what I would like is Asura who are always at max size, Norn and Char always at minimum size and humans and Sylvari right in the middle when in a match. The sizes might have to come up or down a little to make them a little closer, but still distinguishable. The other suggestion I have seen is a settings option to make all players appear human to your character. I like both of these, I’m not picky.

Minions and AI!
Summoned minions and spirits should scale in size to the caster. Spirits need to be a little more transparent and the color of each type a bit more pronounced. I would like all Mesmer clones to have a bit of shimmer to them as well, but I’m sure they disagree lol. AOE cap in PvP has no reason to exist, let AOE be the bane of AI spam.

Now a bit more Ranger specific:
Spirits should be non targets and immune to damage like old Guardian spirit weapons. The trade off would be 10% chance to gain effect vs 35% (25% traited vs 70%). Spirit of Nature revive reduced to 1 target. Spirits would be destroyed when commanded unless traited with Natures Vengance (reworked to: spirits are no longer destroyed when commanded)
This would make spirits less like minions and more like auras. No more projectile blocking, but less need to destroy them too. On a side note, pve and wvw rangers would probably love this.
Ranger Pets: Reduce ranger pet damage by 75% and give their utilities an instant cast skill that emanates from their position. Then Make rangers attacks scale in damage similar to the other classes.
Example: Greatsword 1: Ranger- 203(power coefficient- 0.55) Warrior- 259(0.7, but also has 1 stack vuln) Guardian- 296(0.8) Put ranger damage somewhere in with these.

Sorry to only class focus was on ranger (I rarely even play mine so its not a bias thing) and I understand that other classes need tweaks here and there but those can be done with the guidelines above. Ranger core mechanic just felt broken, and needs to be fixed somehow. This was my best stab at it.

Stats!
OK, this is a bit more ambitious than the rest but I would love to condense main stats to only 5. Power, Precision, Toughness, Vitality and a combination of Condition Damage and Healing Power we will call ‘Magic’ for now. Being a combo stat, Magic will have 50% of the effectiveness of current Healing Power and Condition Damage. All critical attacks will cause +75% the damage of a normal attack. This is just a personal pipe-dream of mine, balancing offence and defense, and reducing heavy burst, bunking, and condi specific builds all at the same time. Gear would look like from offensive to defensive:
Power
Precision
Magic
Toughness
Vitality
And you could still have 1 main stat with 2 minor stats on gear. Celestial would have to be bumped a bit too.

Well, that’s all I got. I leave it now in the hands of my kind forum compatriots.

Sykper.6583:

Snip

Guardians are as jealous of warriors defiant stance as warriors are of guardians litany of wrath. The funny thing is that despite all the envy, neither heal is all that useful.

And then you bring the two together and have the magic of spirit powered minions…GG

It is incomplete, but just barely. There are some high level DPS guards out there, but they require a lot of skill to pull off what other classes can do easier. Doesn’t make it not fun though.

In pvp you can’t just face-tank damage like you might think, you have to mitigate. Time your blocks, blinds, aegis, dodges to the best of your advantage. Stability is a must for some situations and you are very vulnerable to conditions with low health, so bring lots of condi clearing as well. Guards don’t solo-tank very well compared to some other classes that are actually much tougher than us, but in a group the support we offer more than makes up for it. Don’t go out alone.

You still need solid mass to fill your volume, or you simply phase through each other, like to volumes gas.

Disregard litany, unless you have mad skill and timing it is pain to use anyway. 10/0/30/25/5 or 10/0/30/5/25 with zerk ammy speed runes and hydro sigils help a lot. I generally run GS/hammer with scepter/focus on swap if I need ranged. It works but guards do need some soft cc love.

Melee aoe against pets is not as good as you think. You will still miss targets due to aoe cap, summoner will evade and lock you down so pets will just feed off you because you are knee deep in them. And even when you destroy a pet it often has bad side effects and another one spawns to take its place. And if someone nearby has retaliation, kiss your kitten goodbye.

Dude, just change the wiki and be done with it.

The definition of attack includes verbal forms of threat, so I still think description is fine. I do think a blind assailant is less threatening than one who can see, maybe just me. And please no to blackout screen, I would like to at least see the thief who rips my heart out.

A utility can be an attack. In fact, a good way to tell if a utility is an attack, see if blind skill makes it miss. If the answer is yes, it is an attack.

Might want to check Websters definition of attack and see if you are missing something.

5 player limit in tPvP matches, 5 target cap on AOE. Nerfing AOE in PvP only helps encourage bad tactics like zerging or standing around in a clump, especially in 8 player hot join. Oh, it also encourages more AI spam builds. Kitten that.

The problem with boosting HS active to 4800 is the 16 second cool down with signet mastery. 4800 every 16 seconds is very strong, especially considering any rune procs.

Remove aoe cap in PvP.

JETWING.2759:

Agony.3542:

I was thinking about nerfing the passive regen by a fair amount (down to something like 300/s but granting extra regen per condition applied to you, making the signet stronger vs heavy conditions (which could help warriors getting away from their cleansing ire addiction) and punish the passive play in shorter fights a lot more.
I still would appreciate a buff on the other healing skills aswell though. Just remember how viable warriors were before the changes to cleansing ire, hs, adrenal health etc.

I do not agree.
1 – Warrior already have a cleansing heal (and, in addition have Restorative Strength).
2 – Warrior already have one situational heal (Defiant Stance), do not need one more.
3 – Actually, Mesmer signet heals 980 h/s. Is an absurd make warrior signet weaker than Mesmer signet.

Actually, Healing Surge is more useful that Healing Signet.
Healing Signet are good only for some easily unusable builds.

Mesmer signet ticks every 3 seconds, so it is equivalent to 327 a second max.

When life gives spam… make a sandwich?

Lonewolf Kai.3682:

Harbinger.8637:

On the 17th they are doing a stream discussing upcoming balance changes. So pretty much have to wait and see what they have in store for guards.

Probably tooltip corrections.

Don’t forget a 2% buff to Kindled Zeal, they did claim to want to work on our condition builds, and they could claim to have fixed the Zeal tree at the same time! So OP!!!

To increace population in different zones you should have zone specific skins (could just be reskined current meshes even) that unlock at specific karma verdors in the zone when you complete a certain number of dynamic events there. Say, first item to unlock in kesseks hills is boots at 30 events. Next is gloves at 60. Etc… They could be purchased with karma as you are rewarded with that for the events. Being skins only they would be very horizontal.

I also like the idea of using your order to give you daily quests around the world. Things like bounty hunter (champions) treasure hunter (jumping puzzles, mini dungeons) scavenger (collect items from specific mobs) etc… Order leader would reward you with chest/laurels/whatever when all are completed.

I think this would make the players feel more involved in the world, and would help new players and alts not feel so alone.

I think

Zealots Speed used to drop a symbol of swiftness in beta, but now you get symbol of wrath for retaliation. I wish it were swiftness.

I main a guardian. I have no sympathy for your ‘long’ cool down.

keloorie.6085:

P Fun Daddy.1208:

keloorie.6085:

lchan.2169:

I have no idea how people can think HS is OP. It amazes me. When you are going at it, you want to be using a heal skill that when activated gives you highest instant heal. Not some helling that ticks a few hundred a sec. Does kitten in a 5-10 sec fight.

400 healing per second
In a 10 second fight
400 X 10 = 4000 healing ( passively )
= kitten
Passively healing for 4000 in 10 sec is just totally useless, so dudes please stop complaining about our HS

When was the last time a fight lasted ten seconds for you?
I run a zerker staff ele mostly, and even I can’t remember the last time that a fight was that short for me.

But you just still cannot deny that we are having the most useless healing skill comparing to other classes. While guard have a healing skill can cleanse condition passively, engine have the new healing skill make him cannot be dead, mesmer have the healing skill which almost can always enjoy its most effectiveness, not to mention the full condi cleanse healing on necro, They are OP, and the thief can stealth heal, OP as hell
The point is, all of those class except warriors have they special benefits while warrior only have a hammer stun lock, zerker stance and endure pain…. which is obviously not enough to fight other classes

Warrior-Mending: Clears 3 conditions. Base Heal- 5240 every 20 seconds (10480 health and 6 conditions in 40 seconds)

Guardian-Signet of Resolve: Removes 1 condition every 10 seconds(when not on cool down). Base heal- 8150 every 40 seconds. (4 conditions and 8150 health in 40 seconds, if you wait to use it)

Defiant stance makes you not die for 3 seconds, and can heal you full if timed correctly. Same with engineer skill though I imagine it is a bit easier to time with 5 seconds.

Are you talking about the new mesmer signet heal? The one that heals less often and for lesser amount than Healing signet, and hast stipulations for its effectiveness? I suppose it at least has an interesting active.

Grass is not always greener, and sometimes its just a different shade of green.

Could you imagine the defensive plays like holding a bridge or archway? Having theives sneak through the lines to assassinate casters? Would your back line focus fire on their front line? Or would they step a little closer to hit their rear support?

Would this encourage smaller zergs, and reward more organized play? Would it change the roles classes or make them more/less viable?

For me, most difficult classes 1vs1:
Necro (minion master,terror)
Engi (bomb/nade on a point)
Mesmers (all of them, if played well, kitten moa)

Spirit rangers can be a problem if I don’t have anything ranged equipped.

Condi warriors can be tough if played well.

Melee assist does already move you out of target, so the game is capable. As I’m sure no one here has developed this games engine themselves, assuming no performance issues, let’s keep the topic on the concept.

Liza.2758:

PvP wise

Guardian’s play style is very predictable … because all Guardian has now are .. Triple Med / Sword focus – GS ….

every dam Guardian play triple med …. It’s the best choice you have now with heals and dot cleans but at the same time it becomes very narrow playing. Most of good duelers are used to it by now and be able to kite or avoid it easily …

I started using a condition build for fun in pvp. I swapped back to burst and yeah…had better luck with condi build, mostly because no one knew what to do with me lol! We need some variation.

Solstice.1097:

what if dodge-rolling skipped this altogether so trolling wasn’t really an issue and you couldn’t really accomplish anything by standing in someone’s way?

as well as stealth and leap finishers.

I think that could work.

And as for performance its as simple as collision detection on hit box, can’t be that bad.

Solstice.1097:

yep thought about it interesting and i would be in favor but I can’t imagine it happening because performance issues would be worse and griefing could quickly get out of hand.

But coding-wise it would just be like a tiny ring of warding around every player without the knockback effect and stability cannot negate.

But what about ranged attacks? Would they still be blocked by your own players? can dodges, moving skills, stealth, etc get you past blobs?

Interesting and excellent questions! I would say projectiles would have to pass through allies, as they cant really be arced over, this would have to be the case with all attacks. I think the ability to dodge through characters could be interesting. Pets and summons would have to ignore characters for movement of course, or that would be a mess. Stealth I’m on the fence about. Movement skills could have a bit of a push to them for enemies only, reduced movement speed that would be further reduced if being pushed against with running. Mist for would go through of course. Anything else?

So, how would you guys feel if WvW changed to not allow characters to ‘phase’ through each other as if we didn’t exist? Say you run INTO a guardian instead of through him, both friend and foe? Give characters a hit box with some mass.

I feel this could go a long way in reducing blobbing, giant unorganized zerging, massive boon stacking etc… Think about organized front lines with ranged back lines. Think about being able to defend opened gates as REAL choke holds. This could also possibly change some characteristics of aoe stacking and give push backs and launches some interesting new play.

Thoughts? Discuss?

You can PvP now, no need to level up as it will put you at 80 when you enter. That’s a good place to try out builds before investing in gear too. As for DPS guards, those are most prevalent in pve. There are some DPS and a good number burst guards in PvP/wvw that can make it work, but guardian meta is support bunker build in wvw or competitive PvP. Warriors are more likely to take the offensive roles.

Burst and dps are very different things too, each requiring different builds. Burst is as much damage as you can cram into as little time as possible (a couple seconds really) and dps is more concerned with highest sustained damage over a longer period of time.

Well u got me thinking, and I’m still not a fan of cast bars, but… There is already somewhat in place a cast tell when using signets and the one for necro fear when downed. I would not be opposed to say, a red hammer symbol over a players head when they are channeling a hard CC like stun/knockdown. Maybe a purple chain symbol for casting an immobilize too. I wouldn’t want symbols for everything, just some of the really important stuff. It would go a long way to increase readability on the battlefield I suppose.

Lately I just run around in hot join and solo q with a super large norn guardian in condi gear. That way when I win or down someone I know its skill>build. Those who fear a challenge can keep their minimum sized asura.

Edit: forgot to mention some mesmers actually prefer to use large norn/char to obscure view with giant clones.

Yeah, like playing a game of chess…yipeee!

The danger of increasing the base active heal is signet mastery, 5-6k every 16 seconds plus higher healing coefficient and possible rune procs is hugely powerful. Perhaps some of the counter-balance to reducing the passive would be a small bump elsewhere as well? Like a small increase in adrenal health, or regen/protection/vigor added to some other traits or skills?

Cast bars are for your dads mmorpg’s! If you can’t react to something coming your way, or get surprised by a sneaky attack, well that’s just part of the game. Works both ways, btw. Now for those a sura, there have been some great suggestions already.

TheGuy.3568:

Grok Krog.9581:

If the passive is to be nerfed then the active must be buffed.

In the case of HS this is simply the truth. The issue is many players lobbying for a nerf do not understand that and many warriors feel that any nerf is unfair. This has been asked for from before the signet was buffed.

I would love some interesting mechanic on using HS, as it would sync well with traits/runes on its super low cool down. There definitely needs to be some reason to use it, and less reason to sit on it. Strong passive play is bad for all classes. 400 HP per second is simply too high for almost no investment. If your opponent deals 1.2k damage per second its like permanent protection. Maybe take passive back to 200 and let active heal for normal amount plus heal 20% damage for the next 5 seconds like the new guardian heal? Or to make it different 10% over 10 seconds.

Nerfs look bad, especially to something that was recently changed. Developers will often ninja-nerf a skill by claiming to enhance it and then simply change the skills/traits mechanics.

Now they just need knockdown…

Warrior is not fine. It is not highly polished if it requires a bandaid the size of healing signet to be viable. You can put your blinders on if you wish and pretend nothing is goingto happen to ‘your’ class if you keep ignoring everyone. We have all seen this before though, and you can bet things are going to change. Shaved like necro? Destroyed like ele? Some of us are trying to make reasonable suggestions just in the hope that this class is not obliterated. Disagree with those as you like but please don’t jump on the all is fine bandwagon.

Some of my favorite comments: “people just still expect warriors to be free kills” (might have worked, oh, six months ago?)

“Its a l2p issue, you just need to dodge everything and keep poison up 100% of the time.”

" you need to change your build to counter warriors. All of you."

“Warrior is not OP, all the other classes are just UP”

And to be fair I don’t think wars are all that op, and would love for them to be able to specialize more into particular roles they build for. That is what is at the heart of any of my suggestions.

Is it easier to balance 1 class against 7 or 7 classes against 1? We all know the answered to that and so do the devs. In the end its not up to us, all we can do is post constructive feedback and suggestions and hope it has some impact.

Stealth walls/gates, anet make this happen!!!

It is the hybrid do everything warriors that people complain about. They already don’t need vitality, current healing signet/adrenal health mechanics remove any need for healing power, so there is another defensive stat ignored. This allows a hybrid warrior to only require a decent amount of toughness for a large amount of sustain that syncs with stuns/blocks/immunity. My proposed reduction or addition of 100 HP per second is rather small in the heat of battle to be honest, but it does at least require some moderate sacrifice to retain the current level of healing. The big change is in the active, because giving a good excuse to use a skill is a well designed skill. I even proposed rather large upgrades to the other healing skills to promote use.

If 100 more HP per second to a warrior who gears for maximum healing power is more feared than one who can trade that stat for more power with only 100 HP per second less, well I’ll be very surprised. In a 60 second fight that equates to an extra 6k health.

Kagamiku.9731:

Brush up on your class knowledge. Save yourself is ironically called “Kill Yourself” by many guardians consequently because the conditions you draw to you will generally kill you in group play. It is not an invul state and in PvP simply open the door for corrupt boons. You can better mange conditions for your party with consecrations and the virtues line as it is.

I disagree. I use it often to great success. And if you’re a bunker guardian your’e essentially going to receive 10 seconds of all boons at no cost. Because you’re likely to be the only one defending the point.

Its not 10 seconds in PvP, duration of boons was reduced to 5 seconds. Its like lyssa runes without stability and it gives you condi, not clears them.

glaphen.5230:

I guess I’ll even list the things having to do with condition removal since then.
Fire Magic VIII—Burning Fire: This trait has a new effect and now automatically uses Cleansing Fire when the elementalist has 3 conditions. There is also a 40-second cooldown. Moved to the Master tier.
Inspiration IV—Mender’s Purity: This trait now removes 2 conditions.
Inspiration XI—Shattered Conditions: Increased the radius from 240 to 600.
Fleet of Foot: The conditions will now be removed at the beginning of the dodge roll instead of at the end. This trait will now only go on cooldown when crippled or weakness is removed.
Perfect Inscriptions: This trait now increases the effectiveness of the passive condition removal on Signet of Resolve.
Purging Flames: Base functionality has been reworked. This skill now removes three conditions from allies in an area effect around the guardian while burning enemies (enemies that enter or exit the flames are still burned). This skill now reduces the condition duration for allies who remain in the consecration areas.
The Purging Flames change was actually a nerf since it used to remove all conditions and the -33% is useless since no one stands in it.
Pure of Voice: Fixed an issue so that this trait no longer removes a second condition. It will only convert one condition into a boon on allies affected by the shout.
What a bug fix nerf?
Power Cleanse: This skill now removes 2 conditions from up to 5 allies in a 240 radius.
Juvenile Brown Bear

Shake It Off: This skill will now remove two conditions from nearby allies. This is the bears skill not the Warrior.

Would you look at that, only changes to things no one even used and the only good changes were to mantra Mesmers. Also this is from newest to oldest.

Purging flames removed 1 condition to anyone anytime they entered the area of effect, it never removed 100%. You could dance in and out to remove multiple conditions, and anyone running through could do the same, so nerf and buff. Perfect inscriptions used to make signet of resolve remove 2 conditions every 10 seconds, a100% buff. Now it is ‘buffed’ to remove 1 condition every 8 seconds, a 20% increase instead.

Harper.4173:

Regarding HS – it was designed to give sustain to non-bunker type warriors.
The whole complaint here is from people that are encountering the " unkillable bunker wars that are traited for defense and regen" – if you make it heal for 500 if you trait into healing and bunkering prepare for some more backlash.

HS is fine.

I have to disagree with your take on HS intended design. Long term regen has a greater effect on a low damage bunker build vs. one built to kill quickly. Bunker builds need greater sustain or they are ineffective, but should do so at the cost of high damage. Hence, the need for healing power. A glass build should sacrifice sustain for killing power, hence the term ‘glass cannon’. 300 HP’s is still a 50% buff to its original design, and the new mechanic could be used for some serious high risk/reward plays.

I’m just confused about what you do want. There are plenty of sets out there that don’t look very ‘paladin’ to me, but you might think paladin looks like something completely different. I have idea what you mean about general though. But I just can’t see a big movement to allow classes to wear other types of armor when they offer no benefit.

Huh? I dont even… My head hurts.

No one would want to wear lighter armor because of lower defence. As for looks, you are going to have to be more specific on what you DO want. More cloth? Try HotW.