Guild Wars 2

Can we get a sense of direction the devs have in mind for each class? Where they feel they currently are and where they want them to be able to perform?

Because with no cap pve becomes more faceroll than it is already. I mean, can you imagine 250 stacks of bleed?

Condi builds in Pve are only good if you are going solo. In any team the cap can be a hindrance. Now in wvw or pvp, condi is very strong despite the cap. This because no proffesion can survive full stacks of anything for long, so keeping the stacks up against condi removal is important.

You can still protect others as a DPS in pve. Protection, aegis, reflection, none of those are effected by healing power. In PvP/wvw you SHOULD gear up as a tank, its a role we are pretty good at there.

OlrunTheBlade.1486:

Some guardians are happy they don’t have to stand in a circle anymore

The general fear of guardians is that without being needed on mid to bunker, where do they fit into the team? The only thing they then bring that others can’t is aoe stability. Non bunker guardian builds tend to be sub-par otherwise.

I would personally love a viable off-guard, but given the last balance patch, its not likely to happen any time soon.

It was great at pointing out some core mechanical strengths and flaws of guardians and conditions. I really think that there is some great potential to a burn build guardian, it just lacks survival.

I ran a carrion (cond/pow/vit) amulet with both a 30/10/0/0/30 build and a 10/25/0/5/30 build both with permeating wrath and supreme justice. I had more DPS in the radiance build vs the Kindled Zeal in zeal, thanks to a good crit chance with precision, 10% from radiant power and gobs of fury from inner fire. Condition Damage from 25 in radience was roughly equal to the added damage from Kindled Zeal. Plus radiance build offered more survival due to vigorous precision along with securing stomps with renewed justice.

To add insult to injury for Kindled Zeal, the added burn duration in the zeal line was useless as well. I find one of the odd strengths of burning on the guardian to be the short duration spammy damage. Opponents who try to clear conditions while still in the fight will have burn reapplied right after, ticking for the same damage as before. Using staff and GS with Sigils of Fire I was able to stack up a LOT of burn duration, ticking for 666 damage every second, and around 750 when they backed off and I used Empowering Might.

My attack with Runes of Balthazar was just under 3k, armor 2100 and hp 17.7k. I used a sigil recharge reduction build with resolve, judgement to make up for lack of toughness, and used wrath for the heck of it. I also used purging flames for condi removal and more burning (even more with GS and fire field). It could probably use some tweaks but it was fun and I never ranked less than #2 in my hot join hero matches.

Not sure how anet will attempt to build a viable condi guardian, but it will be interesting to find out. Just hope they put more effort into it than the ‘power guardian’ they fumbled.

Litany dictates the actions of my med burst build once activated. Shelter allows me to position for a setup. And it leaves me stacked with a lot of long duration might. Signet of resolve simply works.

So the pyroclasim (sic?) Guide got taken down? I was running a burn build last night for some fun in hot hot hot join, and wanted to compare my build with the established one. Now I see it has been taken down, and this gives me hope. Hope that something will be done with guards that will give them a build or purpose that can actually compete with the support/bunker build. Conditions would not have been my first choice as I enjoy my burst med build and would love to see a viable power build, but veriaty is veriaty and I am bored to tears. Burst guardian is as close as we have right now (still not quite there), and the power guardian ship sailed dec 10th. All hail the condition guardian?

I was thinking the same thing with guardians signet of resolve. Only 600 vit instead of toughness.

I have a soft spot for trolls, I just keep feeding them.

Its a throwback to days when other classes didn’t know how to kill a guardian, or lacked the tools to do so. A lot of guardian skills had boon duration nerfed, most notably retaliation(also took a big hit to damage) and in PvP, protection. All this plus the low health pool and lack of decent offensive traits and no ability to control a mobile fight have cemented guardians into their place in the meta. Go full support bunker or go home.

I ran full zerker gear guardian with a semi-support/DPS build in the TA aether blade path when it was first released. My boons were as effective as any other guardians and my damage didn’t blow. In fact I ended up being the last man standing against oak heart after my team wiped early trying to fight him at range. I finished him off alone, in full zerk gear, and survived just fine using dodge rolls/aegis/shelter/renewed focus. I’m not even a very good player, but don’t have many issues in DPS gear.

Our sustained DPS when buffed is extremely high with the right build, we have a lot of damage multipliers, and our weapon damage scaling is quite high. Granted I don’t run full zerk pure DPS on all paths, but I’m just not that twitchy good.

I wish they would change Retreat! to 10 seconds swiftness/10 seconds aegis and reduce the cool down to 30 seconds. They could honestly do that with a lot of other skills we have too.
Wall of Reflection at 5 seconds with a 20 second cool down,
Sanctuary 3 seconds with a 60 second cool down,
Hallowed ground 5 seconds with a 40 second cool down,
I would love it, more active play and less time sitting around waiting for my cool downs to come off.

I like the new triangle much better. It’s cleaner and easier to read, this is forming into something quite nice, good work. Only issue I have now is controller being long range, as a lot of cc and control skills are also melee. Would you like to see that change, and is so, why?

Why must every profession have only one role? Having the option to change traits/gear should at least allow a few alternatives. Otherwise just force us into the ‘optimal’ build for our ‘role’ and be done with it.

DeathPanel.8362:

jportell.2197:

This thread is about the heal so why woudn’t i mention the heal? Also if you use meditations in pve content such as dungeons fractals or world boss fights…. You are possibly the most selfish guardian in the game… Meditations are great for DPS pvp, open world pve, solo wvw. Thats it. Using it in zergs, dungeons, boss fights etc… There are so many great and “imaginative” builds that use other things besides meditations because they provide group support something meditations completely lack.

It’s irrelevant that you don’t want to comment on pve. The topic does not make that distinction so I commented on it. Also, I’ve already stated this numerous times. The heal is an addendum, and therefore you can choose not to use it if it doesn’t work for you. Therefore it in no way magnifies any problems.

The most useful aspects of the guardian is in the reflects, blinds, and virtues and those are in tact in any meditation build and one of the meditations can be swapped out for consecration or stand your ground for specific encounters that require stability so your statements regarding meditation group play is invalid.

I believe when the OP says “magnifies” problems with the guardian he means that it brings attention to the problems. Not that it makes them worse. Can we move on now? Neither of you are listening to each other.

Wanted to chime in and agree, great LS chain here! You guys really seem to have polished your delivery. Thanks!

Morelia.6835:

Speaking from a WvW perspective, ideally this trait gives (for each application of Retreat or Virtue of Courage):
300 damage * 5 (Retreat/VoC apply Aegis to 5 allies) = 1500 damage applied to 5 targets (7500 total). This is around the same as three Staff autoattacks, assuming this damage can crit.

I don’t think it’s that bad, but I feel like I can’t really justify spending the points on it compared to the other options.

It used to have the same mechanics, only it would burn for 400 a tick for 2 ticks. Even if you crit with it now its a heavy nerf in damage, especially considering toughness and protection now effect the damage.

Tanks need aggro to be useful, you can’t get that reliably in this game. Also, with no dedicated healers, no one could keep you up even if you could manage aggro. This is a different kind of mmo.

Staff 2 needs to be fixed so it doesn’t get stuck in terrain, forcing a detonation. Only problem with staff 5 is that they didn’t shave the cool down of the skill when they reduced the duration of the line.

Scepter is not a bad weapon, it’s just a bad RANGED weapon. The auto attack works well up to range about 300 to 400, and for ranged weapon hits hard. Past that and you miss alot. Scepter 2 has such a short cool down it can be placed down to cover pathways and perches very well. #3 skill is a bit lackluster, though. I am also in love with changing the scepter trait to only 5% damage increase but adding cripple on crit. No more complaining about projectile speed with that.

Sword third hit can be quirky, but the glaring issue on the weapon is skill #3. So many good suggestions out there, this skill needs some love/change/rework.

Shield does provide extra armor, at least a little bit, even without traits. The skills aren’t bad, but the cool downs are. Lower cool downs by 20% if skills remain unchanged. Or give skill 4 a short daze and skill 5 a blast finisher when activated.

Torch 5, self condi cleansing. That’s how you open up dps builds, you give them the tools to be relevant, to exist. Honestly that’s all the torch really needs right there.

Mace auto 3rd strike needs to cleave. Protectors strike used to knock back or knock down in beta, I can’t remember which. I would love on demand protection from protectors strike.

Solid post, I agree with all your suggestions. Hammer auto-attack chain is tricky though, due to the symbol. Personally I wish the symbol was moved to another skill, but many like it where it is, and I wouldn’t even know where else to put on hammer to be honest. My only decent idea is to swap it out for mighty blow have that as 3rd attack, then adjust duration, cast time and cooldown to symbol of protection to mirror mace symbol. But even that has its drawbacks…

Whirling Wrath fires off more, but biding blade looks like 1 as well. I just assumed there were more, because the projectiles look so similar.

As I quoted in another thread, from the Devs-

“We do feel that damage guardians are not as powerful as they could be.”

“we opened up more offensive guardian builds.”

“I feel like there is a build here, but TBH I haven’t gotten it to work in our internal testing yet.”

“Another thing about this build is that you do not have all of the information you need about this power guardian right now, but I can’t reveal more without spoilers. /tease”

“I think this makes it feel more like a Symbol, which is good. We are still discussing the idea of it being 5 seconds”

“I think Dec 10th will see the emergence of the power guardian”

“The fact was this was a lackluster trait and this is a lackluster change to it. I would love to do the right thing here and have a change that MH sword wants rather than just 5% more damage.
Thoughts?”

Can you really blame us for being disappointed?

I think what upsets people most about this patch were the promises of something substantial this time around.

With quotes like:

“We do feel that damage guardians are not as powerful as they could be.”

“we opened up more offensive guardian builds.”

“I feel like there is a build here, but TBH I haven’t gotten it to work in our internal testing yet.”

“Another thing about this build is that you do not have all of the information you need about this power guardian right now, but I can’t reveal more without spoilers. /tease”

“I think this makes it feel more like a Symbol, which is good. We are still discussing the idea of it being 5 seconds”

“I think Dec 10th will see the emergence of the power guardian”

“The fact was this was a lackluster trait and this is a lackluster change to it. I would love to do the right thing here and have a change that MH sword wants rather than just 5% more damage.
Thoughts?”

Can you really blame us for being disappointed? All that talk hinting towards something big, and we get: +5% sword damage, that we were specifically told was “lackluster”. As for the other changes?

Kindled Zeal and Retributive Armor were not even guardian specific, just a change to the way they are calculating conversion traits across the board. Shattered Aegis was not even a buff, just a mechanic change that now lacks synergy. Searing Flames is OK, but its far from a damage guardian trait and lacks any real impact. Same with Pure of Heart and Supreme Justice. No impact.

Symbol of Swiftness? There are other threads discussing that one.

Guards already have good dps OR strong condition removal + support. We can’t have both, and our middle ground is bad too. We either sacrifice too heavy on one side or the other.

Spear has projectile finishers. Not helpful on land I know, but I think the intention with projectile finishers was that they were tied to ‘physical’ projectiles.

I’m not out to ‘balance’ or ‘change’ mechanics, simply point out flaws and inconsistencies with certain skills/traits that need to be fixed or addressed.

So, I understand the next balance patch is probably a long way out at this time, but I would like to point out a few bugs that could be fixed with the guardian that would very much improve the classes quality of life. Just 6 little things.

1. Zeal Adept Minor Trait: Zealots Speed.
   While the tool tip does correctly state that the symbol created by this skill is a symbol of wrath, the skill description itself states “sear a mystic symbol into the target area, damaging foes and granting SWIFTNESS to allies”. Clearly, with the name Zealots SPEED and the description indicating swiftness, this skill was meant for a symbol of swiftness vs. wrath. Having swiftness when falling low on health is far more intuitive than retaliation, it would be a small yet very beneficial change to a rusty trait line.

1. Torch Skill #5: Cleansing Flame.
   I have a hard time thinking of another cleansing skill that only effects allies and not the caster. Surely, as quirky as this skill is to use and aim, it must be a mistake to not have this skill remove conditions on the caster. Having cleansing flame remove a condition per tick from the caster as well as allies in the line of fire would make much more sense. It would also revitalize the torch as an excellent tool for DPS guards giving them a way to deal with conditions. Plenty of time for counter play as well, due to the long casting channel and big blue fiery tell.

1. Mace, third chain strike: Faithful Strike.
   The third attack on the mace auto chain does not cleave. I find this strange as the previous attacks cleave, as do all other guardian melee weapon normal strikes (sword #3 is a bit different, but it is understandable by design). This lack of cleave on the mace auto chain really hampers its use vs. other weapons on multiple enemies. I firmly believe that if you look back into why this attack does not cleave you will find that it probably had issues with with multiple healing procs when striking multiple enemies. If this is the case, please fix it properly and return some core functionality to the mace. It could be as simple as reducing the healing amount to balance it out.

1. Mace, skill #4: Protectors strike.
   This skill is a whirl finisher, and that is not indicated in the tool tips. If this skill is intended to be a finisher, being a whirl finisher is an odd choice as it only has time to produce a single bolt fired in a random direction. Please consider giving this skill a proper finisher if it is intended to be so. If it is unintended, please remove the finisher and re-adjust the skill accordingly. I know skill finishers must add in to the overall skill calculations, so when whirl finisher was added to the skill that damage, boon duration or skill cool down must have also been effected.

1. Staff skill #2: Orb of Light.
   We all know this skill gets ‘stuck’ or ‘hangs’ in the terrain, forcing the caster to detonate the orb and eat the longer cool down. This could easily be fixed by changing the ‘ranged’ feature of the skill with a ‘duration’. Simply calculate how long the orb must last to travel 1200 units and have the skill end at that time. No more missing orbs. Would be really really great.

1. Contemplation of Purity: Condition Conversion.
   Conversion of conditions to boons by this skill is not nearly as powerful as the conversions from Pure of Voice. You miss out on multiple stacks of might vs. one, no chance of vigor, and usually end up converting 6 or more stacked conditions to about 2 or 3 non stacked short duration boons. This skill really needs to be normalized with PoV to be more worthy of its long cool down, and a decent counterpart to Corrupt Boon.

There, 6 simple small ‘fixes’ that would do wonders for the class. These are not the changes I would like to see in a big balance patch, but considering that ship has sailed for the foreseeable future, this should be easy enough to implement.

Don’t compare our skills to warriors skills please, it can only end in tears.

Needs work. Fine for pve, but no one traits meditations in pve. I haven’t been in zerg play with it in wvw, but can’t see it coming out ahead of shelter there. In 1vs1 it is very weak. In spvp it is too slow and unreliable to use in emergencies.

In order for it to be competitive with our other heals it needs at least one of the following- instant cast/longer duration/ larger base heal/ stronger effect (50% vs 20%)

The current version is just way too conservative.

eleshazar.6902:

Nike Porphyrogenita.8137:

1. Scepter is only superior dps if all of Smite hits, which only happens on large model bosses. The autoattack is nothing compared to Sword.

2. Torch 5 is less dps than sword auto attack by a significant amount.

3. Sword dps caught another 5% boost today, now there is nothing remotely close.

4. Your link is to a Guangmath thread.

1) Correct in that this only counts if smite hits with all hits. You are incorrect in saying this only happens on large scale bosses. The number of hits (assuming no blocks) is decided by how many people are standing in the aoe of the attack and remain there through duration. If one person stands there (no matter how small) and does not leave they will take every hit from the attack. This is rather easily accomplished with scepter 3 skill.

2) Incorrect. According to the wiki page on each:
Sword auto attack chain = 269 +269 + 3(504) = 2050
Torch skill 5 = 10(1,000) = 10,000

3) Great for the 5% boost if you trait into it. Still doesn’t match torch 5…. or scepter 2…
Sword auto attack = 0.05(2050) + 2050 = 2152
Torch skill 5 = 10,000
Scepter 2 = 15(1665) = 24975
Also look at the wiki not for Scepter 2: "Relative to the channel and recharge time, this is the most powerful single skill in the game if all hits connect. "

4) I’m not sure I get your point here…..

Something wrong with those calculations. Try a real world test in the mists on golems, scepter is strong but not that strong. Torch 5 is very slow DPS.

Yes, the mighty swiftness build, so powerful at map discovery…OP.

Its a nerf for me too. Tried it, don’t like it.

Guardian heal works great against golems. Against other players…not so much. Shelter>Signet>Healing Breeze\litany

I got one, it had a dark moon shield in it. I think that’s pretty cool, only because I had no idea those even existed. It is pretty ugly though…

No one lied. I just think they bit off more than they could chew, this was a big balance patch (for other professions, anyway) and we are at the bottom of the priority list for changes. As we have been told by the devs, they see Guards as more than viable in almost all if not all types of play as is. We have our role in PvE/ dungeons/ fractals/ WvW/ PvP. We might not like being stuck in a single role, but we have basically been told to get used to it. Its not going to change soon.

Time to pick up my sword, put down my mace, cross my fingers and try to “rise” as a “power gaurdian”. Hope that 5% extra sword damage can compete with all those other class changes out there.

“The change to sword damage from 5% to 10%. I’ve seen a lot of talk that maybe it is not really needed. The fact was this was a lackluster trait and this is a lackluster change to it. I would love to do the right thing here and have a change that MH sword wants rather than just 5% more damage.
Thoughts?
Jon”

Six pages of suggestions later-

“Radiance X – Powerful blades. Increased damage from 5% to 10%.”

Thanks for the damage nerf to shattered aegis, nerf to symbol of swiftness and calling them “buffs”…

Guards were never a focus for the dev team for changes. They simply had to find some things to make a list of “hey we gave you guys stuff too” without rocking the boat. Maybe we will get something in the next balance patch 6 months from now?

The numbers on Shattered Aegis are 293 base, btw. Too weak to compete with Fiery Wrath. Wasted

“Guardian

Tank and supportive guardians are in a strong position in many game types. We do feel that damage guardians are not as powerful as they could be. While we don’t want guardians to be as strong offensively as some of the other classes (given their powerful defensive abilities), we opened up more offensive guardian builds.

Zeal V—Shattered Aegis: This trait now applies damage instead of burning.

Zeal VII—Zealous Blade: This trait now scales with healing power by 2%.

Zeal XII—Kindled Zeal: Increased the conversion from 10% to 13%.

Radiance V—Searing Flames: Reduced the cooldown from 20 seconds to 10 seconds.

Radiance X—Powerful Blades: Increased the damage from 5% to 10%.

Valor VI—Retributive Armor: Increased the conversion rate from 5% to 7%.

Honor VI—Pure of Heart: Increased scaling with healing power from 25% to 40%.

Virtues VIII—Supreme Justice: Decreased the number of attacks from 4 to 3.

Symbol of Swiftness: This skill now applies 4 seconds of swiftness per pulse, rather than 8 seconds to players without swiftness and 1 second to players with swiftness.

Bug Fixes

Virtue of Justice: Updated the skill facts to indicate the number of attacks required to trigger this skill. Added a fact that indicates radius when Permeating Wrath is traited.

Updated the skill to indicate the increased burn duration when Supreme Justice is traited.

Virtue of Resolve: Updated the skill facts to display the correct healing when Absolute Resolution is traited.

Tome of Wrath—Zealot’s Fervor: Fixed the range indicator so that it will now update properly.

Signet of Wrath: Updated the skill facts to indicate vulnerability when Binding Jeopardy is traited."

Devs stated they opened up some new offensive builds for guards. Where are they? I see nothing that will be used. I was excited about Powerful Blades, but looks like they decided not to change the 5% increase after all.

Any room for a scepter guard to get in on the qq fest here?…

Mace weak points are lack of mobility and no cleave on 3rd hit from auto chain. The lack of cleave is a sloppy fix to multiple healing procs from hitting multiple enemies, I would put money on that.

Good burst in PvP. I traded in my sword for mace on my med build and haven’t looked back.

I’m amazed everyone is assuming guards are getting a huge buff from somewhere. I honestly don’t see where in the pre patch notes this is coming from. Even the increace to sword damage trait (an extra 5%) was left on the table, might be something else.

The hammer chain hasn’t changed, only now it can be knocked back, blinded, dazed or just killed before finishing its 3 hit chain. The hammer was useful in pvp for CC, but the auto chain is so telegraphed it was easy to avoid. Honestly with tall the complaints about current petting zoo classes minions blocking targets, its a wonder more players aren’t looking back to the old guardian spirit weapon mechanics as a solution. Weaker passive pets with good actives that exist on short timers.

Spirit weapons were never OP before, they were seldom used in fact. Now they are simply never used. It was change for the sake of change.