Guild Wars 2

Flytrap.8075:

I think a spirit weapon is the most likely to happen.

Why would you curse us with another one of those?

New shout: “I’ve had Enough!” Guardian instantly defeats himself spreading health and boons to nearby allies, who contue on as if he was never there.

This is a great counter-balace to the new warrior shout: “Give me that!” warrior reaches out and consumes all of his foes remaining health and boons, leaving them too weak to be revived for 15 min.

But seriously, I have idea what skill we will get. 2 out of 3 of ours are pretty good already.

Sword is not bursty at all. Sword 3 may look like burst, but it sure doesn’t hit like burst. Mace, hammer, great sword and even scepter have better burst options, sword is for sustained DPS and lots of constant pressure. That said, it does have an awkward feel about it, and the auto chain animations are very strange and not fluid at all.

Hammer BUFF!…unless you don’t like light fields.

The end is near! Woe unto the guardian! Save yourselves!… Sorry, I didn’t mean to elicit so much doom and tears. I just wanted some numbers to satiate my curiosity.

If shattered aegis hits like fire blast for around 1k, you could potentialy drop up to 25k worth of aoe per application (max 5k per target if you endow aegis to 4 allies plus youself and all of them shatter aegis in range of target of course, with up to 5 possible targets). That could be interesting

And I am still here waiting for those numbers…you know…so we can have a meaningful discussion? Please please please, it has been so many Monday’s… :’(

you can have both fire ele and ogre pet if you activate both quick enough

NevirSayDie.6235:

Mightymealworm.8409:

cut

I really like that idea because condi specs would really have to work hard to cover their two damaging conditions. Unfortunately that would be a massive nerf and would result in the end of condition specs for a while. Maybe application could be nerfed, but damage could be buffed? Otherwise it seems simpler to just remove the condition damage stat from the game.

I would like better scaling with condi damage stat. I also think healing power should scale better as well, and cut base healing skill potency. For my suggestion to work, however, there would also have to be a huge reduction in the number of anti condition skills. I think this would be fine as then you could have your conditions up more reliably (more long term overall damage) and you wouldn’t need to center your build around “do I have enough condi cleanse?” all the time. Conditions would apply a lot of pressure (but not quick pressure) to offensive builds, and be thwarted by builds with good healing power and condition clears, who would in turn be vulnerable to burst builds. I think the game needs more rock, paper, scissors and less rockpaperscissors.

NevirSayDie.6235:

Mightymealworm.8409:

Guardian condition build should be the standard anet balances towards. That should sum up my own feelings right there.

I understand your feelings, but I’d like to hear your reason for simplifying the game so much (i.e. removing condition builds/necessity for condition removal/support condition removal/tanky dps builds, as you suggest).

OK, so ele might be a better example, but guard is close. Let me explain my thoughts on this. First, we need to categorize conditions.

You have damaging conditions, utility conditions, cc conditions and general non-condition cc. Some conditions contain elements from more than one category.

Damaging: Bleed, Burn, Torment, Confusion
(Hybrid) Poison
Utility: Weakness, Vulnerability, Blind
(Hybrid) Chilled
Control Conditions: Cripple, Fear, Immobilize

Non Condition CC: Stun, knockdown, daze, push, pull, launch, sink, float.

Now, every class has access to a handful of the effects above. The “condition spam” problem what most people notice occurs on two opposite end of this spectrum. Too much access to damaging conditions, and/or too much access to CC (whether or not it is condition or effect is irrelevant here). The reason for this is that damaging conditions and cc have very tangible effects on the player. You cannot NOT notice them. Now CC is another topic, but let me say how I would prefer damaging conditions be dealt with.

I think that access to damaging conditions should be limited to 2 per class mechanic, a primary condition and a secondary. Third and fourth conditions could be applied via sigils and/or runes for ‘cover’ conditions. Example:

Elementalist: Primary-Burning (from fire attunement), Secondary-Bleed (from earth attunement) The other attunements offer non-damage conditions. This provides a healthy amount of variety without the ‘spam’.

Guardian: Primary-Burning, Secondary-Retaliation* (Well, its not really a condition, but I think the retaliation boon tries to fit in here for the guard.)

How I would like to see the other classes: Change skills so each class has native access to only 2 DAMAGE conditions. (does not include utility, control)

Necromancer: Primary-Torment, Secondary-Poison

Ranger: Primary-Poison, Secondary-Burning

Warrior: Primary-Bleed, Secondary-Burning

Thief: Primary-Poison, Secondary-Bleed

Mesmer: Primary-Confusion, Secondary-Torment

Engineer: Primary-Burning, Secondary-Confusion

Or something like this. I think it would still allow for a lot of Condition Damage potential, especially if the right 2 or 3 classes got together. It does, however, prevent a class from relying on their own conditions alone to take down enemies.

Guardian condition build should be the standard anet balances towards. That should sum up my own feelings right there.

You are right, its not very clear. All of them activate when aegis blocks an attack.

+Orb of light travels much faster and heals friendlies it passesthingsgh a little now. +Empower lasts a little longer and channels quicker.
+Line of warding can be cast on the move.
+slight damage and more vulnerability has been added to scepter 3.
+a lot of healing traits and skills scale better with healing power.
+might on greatsword 1 attack chain lasts longer.
+more vulnerability added to blind and immobilize traits.
+more damage added to scepter and unscathed contender traits.
+more powerful strength in numbers trait.
+/- vigorous precision altered.
+ mace damage trait adds a lot of healing power.

Lots of small things. Mostly good but also mostly unnoticed. There are probably more.

Worked great in scarlet invasions and mad kings labyrinth. Haven’t tried new patch yet, might be nice there too.

A lot of forum posters CLAIM to have left the game, even more threaten to quit or are “going to quit soon”. I suppose people say that to feel empowerd? For the life of me I can’t figure out why someone would hang out in a forum of a game they don’t play. Must be lonely.

Back on topic, I don’t think 100% uptime of one or two boons is too bad as long as A: the boon is not overpowered and B: it takes sufficient effort and sacrifice to obtain that amount of uptime.

Combination of knights/zerker is pretty solid and aggressive for safety buffered DPS gear. You should be looking at trying traits out first before investing into new gear. I like a 10/25/x/x/25 with fiery wrath, absolute resolution, and unscathed contender with hammer, scepter/focus. That leaves 10 points to spend how you like, either more offence/defence/utility or whatever you feel you need. I’m sure others will have better suggestions though.

“Guardians need to be a little less op (over powered)” = suggestion. The first 2 sentences were case examples in support of the suggestion. The third and final sentance was a rhetorical question, much like “your not for real, are you?”

If the original poster has a real question, he can ask away. Offering a blind, blanketed suggestion based off of a singular encounter with little information tends to get treated unfavorably here. Sorry I lost my cool.

To be fair, it wasn’t a question, it was a suggestion. Check thread title. Questions based on ignorance are good, that’s how we learn. Suggestions based on ignorance are bad, that should be self explanatory.

Its all part of what hurts guardian skills in general. With great support, comes great cool downs. Guard skills tend to be weak 1 on 1. We only really shine when in a group where our skills are much stronger, even if most of the time it feels we are leaning on others to succeed.

Wait, this happened once? Good enough for me, the evidence is conclusive. Break out the nerf hammer!

xFireize.6318:

I think 5 seconds protection is enough.

Sadly it is nerfed to 3 seconds in spvp.

anking.6245:

How bout instead of a 5% dmg boost, it allows us to use Sword 3 on the move?

Having to trait a weapon to fix it’s fundamental issues is the wrong way to approach it.

Vargamonth.2047:

It doesn’t really matter.
Spirit Rangers, like Minion necros, Spirit Weapon guardians or any other kind of petting zoo (except probably mesmer, which is unfortunately based on clones on every single build) needs to be unviable.
You can allow them to exist, but they can’t be competitive. Like many other things, they are annoying to watch and to play against and clearly unhealthy for the game.

Spirit weapon guardians? When was the last time you saw one of those? I actally did mess around with a set of them one time recently roaming in wvw. The guy who destroyed me told me he freaked out when he saw them cause he didn’t know what they were. Turned out they were harmless.

There is some splitting already, with pve and spvp on both sides of the extreme and wvw in the middle. I use word extreme a bit liberally though, as the differences aren’t that drastic. I’m thinking of compiling a list of all game type mode differences between skills/runes/boons etc…

If you are running a burst DPS guard, use mace 2 then 3 and just stand still.

Sword has decent DPS, hammer is pretty low (and annoying on mobs without defiant). The other 2 don’t even attack enemies. Uptime vs pet survivability come into play. As well as extra burning on dungeon bosses being redundant. You would be better off using racial summons and ogre runes for the rock dog.

Redscope.6215:

Crapgame.6519:

CptAurellian.9537:

ODB.6891:

snip

Quite funny how you interpreted that post. In fact, I don’t give a **** about PvP or WvW, so I’m talking purely from a PvE perspective. And to be honest, I also don’t care for all those guards who run around with the AH crutch. What would be the effect of putting such a trait into 30 zeal? Those who have the slightest idea of what is good or bad in terms of builds will still avoid it and run real DPS builds. Those who want survivability, whether it may be useless or not, will still run AH, since it has more synergies than your trait could ever give. And last but not least, such a 30 zeal build would do nothing better than the existing builds. Compared to AH, it would either give up any support or have no damage/survivability advantage, and compared to DPS builds, it can only give up support without gaining any meaningful damage.

Do you really need survivability in PvE? I mean how hard is it to stack AR, stop, drop, and roll? There are no damage meters in this game let alone inspect, gear score, or anything else that limits you from doing anything and everything.

More importantly, we’re ALL talking about various PvP balance. Balance between classes in PvP is the only balance that matters. That’s why people want the skills split up, so the PvErs shut the f up about changes that need to happen.

PvE is easy and all classes perform just fine. If you’ve got a server full of people who want to exclude you because of your class, time to find another server. Nothing Anet can do will change that.

Same could be said to you and PvP, sir. PvE is a big part of this game, and many players like more than one aspect of what the game has to offer.

OK, give it a 10 second cool down…IF you also give us top tier HP pool.

Dynamic Events could award reputation for the zone they are in. Each zone could have a rep merchant that opens upon 100% zone discovery completion. Rep merchant can sell armor and weapon skins unique to zone, not gear, skins only. This would be a lot skin creation, but you already have so many meshes you could just mix up some good looking combinations and re texture them. This would encourage replay in old zones, and give a non-rng reward for doing so.

You could do the same for wvw too.

Please make Torch 5 cure conditions on caster as well as targets. That would allow for a lot more offensive builds right there.

Zeal 25 is also very terrible, causing cripple would help solve issue #2.

My meditation ‘suicide bomber’ build is pure offence. I have no escapes, so I just apply constant pressure and bursts. Sword/torch and scepter/focus 10/30/30/0/0 triple meds. I only catch a break when my enemies flee or die. I love it. Of course, it works best in PvP hot join or ruins in wvw where mobility it limited.

Reduce scepter to 5% and add cripple on crit. Slow projectile needs a slow target. You guys can figure out duration vs cool down. I would also argue glacial heart needs a 5% hammer damage mod to compete with other weapon traits.

JonPeters.5630:

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

Generic: 5% damage, bleed on crit. Actually works well with trait tree and its a sword, it makes things bleed.

More interesting: 5% damage and-

each hit reduces virtue cool down time by 1 second.

Or-

Transfer condition to target (like sigil of generosity)

Or-

Projectiles bounce sriking nearby targets (3rd attack and skill 3)

I run inner fire a lot in wvw/PvP, you would be surprised how much fury you actually get against a lot of opponents.

Perplexity runes are our only good source of condi application from rune sets due to no cool down. Even then, our interrupts are on long cool downs and application is situational. A couple short stacks of bleed from sigils still does little to add pressure or viability. Sure there are ‘fun’ guardian condition builds, but that hardly makes them competitive.

You lose 3 seconds of travel time by standing still to stack it, so the added duration washes out. It is less useful as a clutch escape or chase tool, as proper positioning will be more difficult. As a travel tool, all you have to do now is use it after your swiftness runs out to get the same duration that the new proper positioning gives.

If you want to fix Zeal you have to make grandmaster skills worth taking over the other lines competition. Both Grandmaster skills in Zeal are just plain bad right now. Honestly, and I hate to say it, but if you want to keep kindled zeal, you should swap it with Fiery Wrath.

(Adept) Kindled Zeal, 7% conversion rate.

(Grandmaster) Fiery Wrath, +20% damage to foes inflicted with burning. 20% makes up for the loss of 10% modifiers we could get from other trees when it was adept level. Zeal also adds condition duration so I like the synergy.

As for Condition Damage Build? We need it to not be able to be tanky, or its just plain OP on a guard. I say eliminate Wrathful Spirits (or bump it somewhere else, spirit weapons and thier traits wont be worth taking until they get major re-work) and introduce new Grandmaster Zeal skill.

(Grandmaster) Tormenting Flames: Applies 1 stack of torment for 2 seconds to foes you apply burning to.

2 second duration avaoids the free damage tick (3 seconds would eaqual 4) built in to condition duration in zeal without some investment. No cooldown, low stacking capability make it a very active style application. No fire and forget. 30 points in zeal make it difficult to impossible to go bunker with it. Great synergy with Radience and Virtues lines, neither of them allow you to go tanky.

I would also make Powerful Blades: 5% damage with sword/spear and apply 1 stack bleed for 2 seconds on crit. That forces some build decisions with conditions. It is master level, so you cant go Grandmaster in both Zeal and Virtues and still have this.

As for sticking in a fight. Scepter Power: reduced to 5% with a 5 second cripple on crit, 20 sec cooldown. That gives it maximum 25% uptime. Cripple on scepter would make for some nice ranged damage possibilities.

Make Glacial Heart a Hammer Mastery skill and add 5% damage to it. People would then use it. Adjust chill effect to compensate as necessary.

And last but not least, Sybolic Power: Remove damage modifier, add 3 second chill to last pulse in symbol. No automatic chill gives opponents motivation to move out of symbol. We are supposed to have area denial, right?

I feel we are missing an opportunity with powerful blades change. 10% is nice, don’t get me wrong, but other traits that give 5% also add some interesting utility. Perhaps bleed or cripple (with a cool down) on crit? That would help fix 1 of 2 major issues we actually have, either condition damage variety or sticking to targets. Sword is already our highest dps weapon.

Also, please add 5% hammer damage to glacial heart and just call it hammer mastery. You might see some use of it then…

The only improvement is if you already HAVE swiftness. If you are using SoS to run away, its a nerf. If you are using it for travel, still most of the time its a nerf. Its ONLY a 3 second buff for you and others who cross over it when you already have swiftness and in that case it is rarely important. I suppose you could stand in it to stack it a bit but, well, then you are STANDING STILL to travel FASTER? Terrible trade off, I don’t like it.

Changes seem a bit too much on the shave side and not enough on the strong specialty side for me. Will have to see how it plays out, especially against changes to other professions. Would have rather seen some changes (not necessarily nerfs) to HS and some other forms of sustain. Oh well, stay strong my warrior brethren!

The funny thing is if you take this skill and use the signet of wrath we have some of the highest potential condition damage (as a stat) of all the professions. Its like they gave us the worlds most powerful gun, with no ammunition.

If the damage is high enough it could be a concideration for meditation burst builds, especially if it has low/no cool down. Otherwise, it has way too much competition with fiery wrath.

You are half right. Turns out base heal only applies to caster, it does heal allies per condition removed though. So, less potent than originally thought.

Its a decent option for zerg and group play if you are tank support build. Heals others like Healing breeze with condi removal and it can do it quicker on a lower cool down. Weak self heal, but I rarely use my heal in full support gear.

But you are the one suggesting that suggesting changes to a class is trolling if done so in that classes forum and be moved to the suggestion forum. It is not as defined in terms and conditions, merely your suggestion that it be included.

This suggestion that all suggestions belong in the suggestion forum belongs in the suggestion forum then.

Everyone has at least 5 character slots, and most people have a warrior in one of those slots. I have a warrior and I have asked for some adjustments (some might call ‘nerfs’) in the warrior forum because, well, that seems like logical place to go. Where should I post?

Going to have to call you out on your 30/30/30/30/30 guardian build, because people do it with Warriors all the time. Guards have to spec for most of that, and manage long cool downs with short durations. But yes, wars do need more active damage mitigation, so long as pasives are reduced.

The amount of fury is so-so, not too bad if you consider it is on our burst skills. Personally i rarely even run it with my med build as I use RHS instead to free up some more sustain in stats. Meditations weren’t meant to be sustained dps skills.

teg.1340:

Healing Signet was buffed a few month ago for a reason. The reason was that warriors lack serious sustain. Warriors doesnt have access to Protection, Aegis, Blinds, Evades, Stealth, Blinks, Pets, Clones and stuff like that. Warriors are meant to eat all that damage. Before the latest buffs to warriors, they were a running joke in pvp, because even with high hp pool and heavy armor, sustain was subpar compared to the other professions.

All those sustain boons and skills I mentioned above doesnt force you to run a certain build (e.g. healing build). The moment you make warrior heals depend on healing power you force every warrior to run bunker builds.

Those skills often DO force you to run certain traits to get enough of them to make a significant difference. What class do you consider to be a natural master of sustain with no trade off? Wars also have blocks, condi removal and stuns/immobilize mitigate damage as well. Most all other classes have to spec for sustain, why do you want wars to be different? Let a bunker war be a good bunker and hit soft, and let a damage war feel some pressure and destroy stuff.

Purging flames was not a buff, it was a mechanic change. Old version could remove more conditions by re-entering or could be walked into by a zerg (or player if cast at range) removing conditions for anyone who entered or passed by. New version is more bursty initially and rewards stationary play. Its not better, just different.

Same with Signet of Resolve with perfect inscriptions traited. Not a buff, just a mechanic change. Used to remove 2 conditions every 10 seconds, now 1 condition every 8. More frequent, but less potent.

Same with Signet of Mercy, you can now target it, but you can also now miss and waste it.

Hallowed ground, smite condition, merciful intervention, glacial heart were buffed. Fury on meditation is a new trait.

Healing breeze was also buffed, just in time to be practically replaced by new antitoxin skill. (no channeling aoe heal with similar power for allies and condition removal on a shorter cooldown.)