Guild Wars 2

@OP, I feel the same way. I’ve settled on a condi regen set only because it performs well when outnumbered and does very well in 1v1 if I need to take a point.

I did for awhile have a semi-pet related build where I could maintain 20+ stacks of might on it at all times however the investment for it made me very squishy. I could get my bird to crit for ~6k (every 18 seconds on F2) and the ~16 stacks of might on myself helped me dish out conditions so it was a hybrid based on my pet. As fun as it was melting people it was far to easy to overwhelm :/

Backstab hits like a truck if you get the set up for it but a decent player will utilized that window of “Revealed” and often punish the thief intensely for showing their face.

The cooldown to BS is how long you are revealed + the time it takes to re-enter stealth. Unless you’re running d/p “t-word” “perma stealth” its not simple. Often you end up resorting to the environment for safety and/or a CnD target.

Also pve is a terrible place to use for balance, I mean in fotm 40+ my Pw can hit for ~12k each time and I’m not even full zerker. Also there are videos of something like 40k whirling wrath or 40k 100b. Idk if those numbers are still possible as I don’t run dungeons much anymore but I wouldn’t call them op since those numbers are not achievable in any pvp environment.

All in all, stealth attacks are fine without a cooldown. The only issue with stealth attacks is that blocking them isn’t as rewarding as it should be but there have been a number of posts with some pretty good ideas on fixing that without causing reveal.

Up to you if you need the slot. I have 2 thieves on my account, and ended up buying extra slots rather than deleting him. If you don’t like the looks of thief on an asuran and don’t care for pvp I see no reason to keep em.

Sir Vincent III.1286:

Peow peow.2189:

I really hated playing thief so i parked my thief for my warrior.

Boy oh boy is it a much better class.

I reccomend you guys give it a go, thief is not worth it

I agree. I hated my Thief so much that I rolled another Thief — and hated that too so I rolled a 3rd Thief.

Boy oh boy, it is a much better profession.

I recommend you guys give it a go, the first thief is not worth it — third time’s the charm.

I havn’t quit gotten sick of my 2nd thief. 1 for wvw/pve, another for pvp. 1st is a norn because cultural is BAMF for thief and death blossom is hysterical, 2nd is an asuran because he’s obnoxiously difficult to read in a duel.

Cogbyrn.7283:

NinjaEd.3946:

especially considering the number of unblock able effects that evade doesn’t work against.

In my experience, the game’s dodge mechanic successfully evades nearly everything. The only exceptions I can think of are:

Some PvE mechanics
Guardian GS’s pull after it lands on you. However, if you dodge when you are pulled, you get knocked down without actually being pulled in.

What else is there? An ability being unblockable means that blocks can’t block it. It doesn’t mean dodges can’t evade it.

Any warding like line of warding, ring of warding, unsteady ground, spectral wall, static field, pretty sure tripwire and needle trap, etc.

My problem lies with the current state of condition builds and where guardian fits in it if they were to attempt them. Burn as you said earlier can be easy to override and its because there are a high volume of skills that apply burn. Burn as a condition is very strong, burn as the primary and essentially only (damaging) condition is not.

Even all the dmg modifiers possible for burn the DoT is not enough to compete against the current condi builds that can stack bleeds to 17+ with a mix of poison, torment, confusion, and even sometimes burn as well.

The fact that they have this wide access of conditions makes their hybrid builds also very strong where they don’t have to focus on getting high stacks as much as just having the conditions on you while they hit you with direct damage. Guardian can get a little poison in there from external sources (which others can do too so no real bonus there) and burn. To even make their conditions strong they have to give up a lot of innate defenses while on my ranger or thief or warrior heck even engineer I can be very tough to lockdown and kill while still pumping out some serious DoTs.

The whole point of stealth is to break target and use those few seconds to plan. You can create some distance, you can use a stealth attack, you can try to stay in it and recover. Letting us “evade” without the use of endurance simply takes away half of those uses especially considering the number of unblock able effects that evade doesn’t work against.

Everyone has a widespread of non-damaging conditions, guardian is the only one with 1 damaging condition however which is bad when condition removal prioritizes them. Bleeds are easy to establish in this case, but it’s also such a plain condition and easily accessible that half the time it only takes 1 person to override the rest with the 25 cap.

They need something unique to them that fits. I can’t see torment, since it just seems like a “dark” type of condition however warrior pulls it off because of impale “tormenting” them from walking(a movement based DoT). There are things that can be twisted a little but not to any extremes. I don’t see anywhere a guardian could apply torment aside from ring of warding since their basically imprisoned however it is a light field which makes no sense with torment.

Asurans have hard to read animations due to their size. So if you intend to pvp and want an advantage, there you go. Otherwise run which ever race you like best, I’d recommend looking at their cultural armor to decide that since it’s the only exclusive part of each. Racial skills are for kittens and kibbles only.

Peow peow.2189:

NinjaEd.3946:

panicbutton.1053:

Can you add me to the list of supporters?

Careful what you wish for O.o

they call you ninja ed, well im naming you ninja ted. You may be spoon fed but your butt cheeks will be red when my warrior hammer smashes this thread.

10/10 rap skillz

-10/10 for flip flopping like a politician. The medal goes to Pavel for his ranger recognition.

xbutcherx.3861:

I don’t care if they can steal the skill, WHAT I don’t understand is why is has to be better than the warrior skill?? Why reflect? Why warrior doesn’t have reflect and thief does?
Please Anet explain this to me.. I would appreciate it.

Thanks

Because unlike warriors, thief is actually skillful and gets to go deadpool on them

Why do you get get X3 cc in 1 weapon set?
Why do you get the highest health tier coupled with excessively high hps?
Why do you get ~17 second bleeds on an auto attack?
Why do you get a ~3 second block on a 15 second recharge (http://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Riposte) while guardian’s protector’s strike ends no matter the hit?
Why do you get so much mobility on top of this?
Where is waldo?

no, thank you. If you want to scrap SA just suggest so without putting a veil in front of it.

Lucentfir.7430:

NinjaEd.3946:

Lucentfir.7430:

Sagat.3285:

Too much chill. I proposed that already wasn’t a success tough….

Wanna fix condition guardian put Amplified Wrath in radiance and make it prevent immunity against burn. I believe the devs don’t like hardcounters than when it comes to guardian burn shouldn’t be that hardcountered by random mobs.

That is all we need just that replacement and it will not be OP or UP just right.

Amplified Wrath is fine where it is/ It’s great for power burn hybrid builds which is pretty strong, not to mention 30% Condi Duration for a 6 point investment.

The 30% condi duration is hardly noticeable against 1 second burns which apparently don’t even tick if the total duration is less than a second from -condi duration gear/food. It makes sense to not have high burn duration and +burn damage in the same trait line, but as the primary (and only) damaging condition it’s more background noise than a weapon. It’s almost like those minor traits that apply bleed on crits except those are usually guaranteed at least 3-5 ticks depending on the build.

The problem you’re seeing is you’re relying entirely on VoJ passive that you’re not including other burning sources like purging flames and Judges intervention. Even VoJ active benefits from 30%, include runes like Flame Legion and you’ll easily have about about 65% burn duration. Fast attacks like Whirling Wrath and Sword auto attack make those passive procs of VoJ stack fast and you’ll easily be seeing 3-4 seconds of burn or higher depending on how consistent you are with your attacks(1.5-1.65 in duration a proc which can easily translate into 3s burn on two procs instead os just 2 seconds). Not only that but you can also include defender’s flame which punishes fast hitting attackers when you use shelter or just blocks in general which results in a long stack of burn.

Include Doom sigil and you’re melting people. Include retaliation and pretty decent direct power damage(Retal scales on power) and it’s very punishing to spammers. 750 a burn proc hurts a lot. In radiance it only seems ideal because you’re getting condition damage in the line but you really don’t need that 300 condition damage, nothing in that line really synergizes with Amplified Wrath.

Also FYI Melandru Runes with Lemongrass= 65% Condi duration reduction, and 6 in Zeal(30% burn duration) with Flame Legion Runes=65% burn duration which doesn’t even include Koi cake and Toxic Sharpening stone. Going for 100% burn duration really isn’t worth it, it’s just excess.

I can understand the confusion so I’ll clarify. I don’t want amplified wrath to be moved, I’m simply stating the investment to make use of such traits only to make them impressionable is noticeable more than others on top of the fact that we have very little variety of conditions. The reapplication of VoJ only comes from quick hits none of which are simple to land (smite very small aoe requires immobilize for the most part, sword is fairly easy to kite although it has x5 hits in the chain, gs has a very noticeable animation for whirling wrath).

Like I said, to me it’s just background noise and nothing you can spec into atm. I’ve been up against somewhat hybrid burn guardians in pvp before and although the purging flames hits hard, couple seconds in I remove the burn and the pain is over. Most of their burn applications are easy to avoid or they have such a low up time and are easily removed.

Doug.4930:

Just having a look at the hobo sacks thread on the engineer forum page leads me to believe that Anet will never fix this broken trait.

If hobo sacks are still in the game despite public complaint(18 pages of public complaint) then my hopes for LR being fixed/removed are very low.

heh, that speaks for a majority of the game then.

panicbutton.1053:

Can you add me to the list of supporters?

Careful what you wish for O.o

I’d be 100% up for some bonus effects for the guardian when they apply a burn but they do need more damage, just not burn related. Basically what seras said with bleeds. Anything with blades involved is the easiest condition to grant and would help a ton with guardian condi/hybrid efficiency.

Guardian has few traits relating to burn application like removing a boon, or increasing damage against burning foes. There is also the trait “inner fire” that grants fury when you are burned but for some odd reason it doesn’t work with zeolot’s flame. Even if it doesn’t actually burn the guardian, it would have perfect synergy with this trait but there are all these odd rules.

Even with bleed and burn however, I still feel like a modifier for chill would be really unique not just for the guardian but in general in how the build would behave. I can see it being thematically correct, but I can also see the Q.Q from excessively high condi duration + chill “spam” especially against ele.

snow.8097:

A elite skill just to revive the pet? why should someone equip it
Rather add this to a shout to make it more usable. Add this effect to S&R…or as an side effect of RaO

It could be worthwhile especially if the cooldown was somewhat low. Now they have the options of utilizing “on-elite” runes better, a BM spec pet would be very difficult to defeat. It wouldn’t fix pet but it would help for those who have a BM spec pet that is still just dying to massive AoE spikes. An example for the elite

[Comfort Animal]- Heal (only) your pet for 3,450(.15 healing power scale). If your pet is defeated, instead resurrect them to 33% health while doubling the cooldown of this skill. Cooldown 45(90) seconds. 1.25 second cast time.

Carighan.6758:

So… where are all those patches?
Where is that giant dev team? What are they doing? Where’s the community interaction?

Think they are doodling for the LSS2. China launch is already out, wvw S2 has been over for sometime now, the last “balance” patch was almost 3 months ago and although opened some doors also closed several, it took ~ 3 months to address strength runes (good change I’ll admit just took forever). I think they need to relocate their resources to more prevalent matters like balance and build diversity. I play 6/8 professions and I can make a list of traits and utility/healing skills that are down right pointless, don’t even get me started on rune sets.

Even if their changes may be questionable, they should occur often. You don’t achieve balance by throwing spaghetti at the wall and seeing what sticks 6 months later. There are bugs, there are spec’s that don’t work, there are spec’s that work too good. Make small but frequent changes and it isn’t wac-a-mole, its balancing. I believe they do look at the community feed back, they just don’t do anything with it.

Sagat.3285:

NinjaEd.3946:

Sagat.3285:

Blackjack.2083:

How about we just make condition damage only work in PVE and get rid of it in PvP?

O.o and what happens to every condition related gear,skill,trait line that people already invested in? Increase damage against foes with x condition or x number of conditions,control conditions will be gone so no more need for CC and boons the game will be ruined. Many weapons would have to go or be redone.

Careful of what you say………

Pvp gear is free.

WWW is not reliable for fun or roaming. I seriously want to have all sets,runes and sigils available in pvp. Just because it’s free doesn’t mean you can change it to your liking anytime you want.

They would have to create different traits for pve and pvp which is very awkward don’t forget the damage multiplier traits wich helps direct damage. Just remove cap in pve and we all fine stop destroying diversity.

Then things would be even worse than they already are in pvp. Perlexity runes are very strong, the dire set is very strong (assuming they don’t have condi immunity like diamond skin), even the new nomad’s set would be broken for some bunker spec’s. Those kinds of things bend a lot of rules which wouldn’t be healthy for a place focused on pvp balance even if its attending is on a 24/7 lunch break.

There is just too much wrong with ranger and it seems to all involve the pet. For power builds its a literal percentage of your damage potential, albeit a unreliable source, for support builds they aren’t that impressionable, and for condition builds they are more of just a side kick that goes on cooldown. I’ll never understand the decision to make the pet mandatory let alone a crutch.

In relation to the “rez” pet thing, maybe it could be an elite but even then they die so quick. It seems more of an issue of pet swap than anything because if the pet’s were strong and hard to kill pet swap would be broken on a BM spec. Make an elite skill to raise the pet or heal them directly (http://wiki.guildwars.com/wiki/Comfort_Animal) and remove pet swap after reworking all the pets to be viable from general reworks to their skill effects. Even if some of them are situational, they should fill some role that’s relevant in more than 1% of the game.

Lucentfir.7430:

Sagat.3285:

Too much chill. I proposed that already wasn’t a success tough….

Wanna fix condition guardian put Amplified Wrath in radiance and make it prevent immunity against burn. I believe the devs don’t like hardcounters than when it comes to guardian burn shouldn’t be that hardcountered by random mobs.

That is all we need just that replacement and it will not be OP or UP just right.

Amplified Wrath is fine where it is/ It’s great for power burn hybrid builds which is pretty strong, not to mention 30% Condi Duration for a 6 point investment.

The 30% condi duration is hardly noticeable against 1 second burns which apparently don’t even tick if the total duration is less than a second from -condi duration gear/food. It makes sense to not have high burn duration and +burn damage in the same trait line, but as the primary (and only) damaging condition it’s more background noise than a weapon. It’s almost like those minor traits that apply bleed on crits except those are usually guaranteed at least 3-5 ticks depending on the build.

Sagat.3285:

Blackjack.2083:

How about we just make condition damage only work in PVE and get rid of it in PvP?

O.o and what happens to every condition related gear,skill,trait line that people already invested in? Increase damage against foes with x condition or x number of conditions,control conditions will be gone so no more need for CC and boons the game will be ruined. Many weapons would have to go or be redone.

Careful of what you say………

Pvp gear is free.

It may pull off more damage depending on the set up but sb brings more to the table and the dps loss is hardly noticeable. I can still pull off ~1.7k crits with the aa, ~6k with a well placed detonated cluster and dish some poison/weakness. I love how p/p looks, but it’s not as exciting in practice.

+1, although to be fair my necro build I’m in DS almost the entire time so often my skills are off cd by the time I decide to exit.

creature.5120:

The shroudstomp/rez/channeling Buffs in temple is still doable.
u need the right timing here. first go into shroud then use your actionbutton. i needs some practise to get the right timing.
if you spec for stabi while shroud u have a safestomp every 10 sek. and while channeling a buff on temple u can fear of an incoming enemy or fear a guy away while rezzing.
u just need to practice. it a little bit tricky but not really hard to learn. ask some mates to go with u on a empty map and train it there. spec into 5sec cd on shroud so u can try it more often.

That stability lasts 3 seconds, and often people can time their cc skill to work at the last second. Even thief using SS stomp can be interrupted if you time it right (although they can bypass most).

They could make it every say 21st or w/e attack and have successful projectile skills lower the cooldown by 1 second. It would fit the “ranger” and “marksmanship” theme and more importantly make it reliable. The stealth reapplying opening strike would just be the bonus of using lb and have no effect on this counter, considering it is a GM trait.

Same, I think it’d be good for pve but breaking the 25 stack cap would just be to punishing. 25 bleeds is not hard to achieve between 2 people and that already hurts a lot. Unless they buffed general condi clearing it would be broken. You wouldn’t even be able to cleanse them because it would just be reapplied over and over.

Toughness does nothing against condition damage either, so the only “counter” to conditions is timed condition removal and vitality. Even that only goes so far these days..

Sagat.3285:

NinjaEd.3946:

Ezeriel.9574:

Just a few thoughts on possible talents….

-Frost-burn: chilled enemies take additional burning damage.

-Cold Justice: virtue of justice’s burning also inflicts chill (1 second)

-Jagged Ice: chilling effects cause bleeding

-Bloody Justice: virtue of justice’s burning also inflicts bleeding

Quick question, is cold and bloody justice based on the active or passive or both?

I also tried to not mix fire and ice from the same sources as it seemed a little far fetched. Maybe some synergy between the two like if you apply chill to a foe suffering from burn the burn cannot be removed until the chill is or something like that.

Too complicated will never happen be realistic check the two builds I posted they actually work but Amplified Wrath would be more fitting in Radiance.

They really wouldn’t unless there was some additional condition source that was part of guardian and not a 10-30 second proc. I know burn ticks hard, but the sources are few and far in between and would be removed quite quickly as soon as the player looked at the burn duration they have. Dishing out a 1.5 second burn from the virtue does not do much either unless the enemy is a sitting duck for smite and whirling wrath (multiple hits would mean constant burn during it’s channel). Even with amplified wrath in radiance the build just doesn’t have enough pressure on it which is bad given the defenses it has.

Zackie.8923:

Jayden Ennok.3687:

Why no SB?

don’t really like shortbows

I hear ya, but if your goal is to zerg in wvw sb is your best option. The aa is better than richocet, cluster bomb is a great aoe and blast for fire/water fields, evade is kitten so best to ignore it, aoe poison to hinder their healing is always good and infiltrator’s arrow to escape a static field or avoid some hits while immobilized.

Karolis.4261:

NinjaEd.3946:

Pregnantman.8259:

Reanimator was merged with a GM trait and it actually makes sense this way. The trait, Death Nova, originally caused your minions (and yourself when downed) to explode upon death. With it being merged with Reanimator, you can spawn minions by yourself so they can explode.

Assuming Anet noticed this thread and decided to merge this trait with a major trait in Shadow Arts, which major trait would you like Last Refuge to be with?

Infusion of shadows. I never take it anyways, but at least open the door to something new for the 1 point minor trait.

While those 2 necro traits merging made sense, none of SA trait merge with LR would make sense. Why ? Cause LR would still function as it does now.

Yes, but it would be a major trait and therefore in our control in whether or not we wanted to slot it. I love the SA trait just for 2 points (condi removal being the most common one I take), I just hate knowing LR can proc at a bad time and get me killed which it has numerous times.

Ross Biddle.2367:

Advent.6193:

With all due respect, don’t you think IS has been “worked on” enough? Hell, the bloody skill used to have infinite range on IR, just locked by the timer on when it needed used. It also used to trigger faster.
You also should consider which weapons Thieves are actually using in-meta atm. Looks like a lot of S/D in PvP from where I’m standing, thus we may wish to touch up some of the lesser-used sets, like D/D or P/P.

Sword’s just getting out of line. It needs a good nerfing to knock it back down on par with the others. Don’t want to let it get a big head or anything.

You do realize that s/d is popular because A) sizer played in the ToL (who’s build it belongs to is irrelevant) and B.) its a non-stealth based dps build. Being in pvp, stealth based builds are bad, and s/p has been nerfed fairly bad so it’s no wonder s/d was the best choice. They don’t need to nerf s/d as much as adjust what makes the meta s/d build so good. Not all builds are the fault of the profession.

Ezeriel.9574:

Just a few thoughts on possible talents….

-Frost-burn: chilled enemies take additional burning damage.

-Cold Justice: virtue of justice’s burning also inflicts chill (1 second)

-Jagged Ice: chilling effects cause bleeding

-Bloody Justice: virtue of justice’s burning also inflicts bleeding

Quick question, is cold and bloody justice based on the active or passive or both?

I also tried to not mix fire and ice from the same sources as it seemed a little far fetched. Maybe some synergy between the two like if you apply chill to a foe suffering from burn the burn cannot be removed until the chill is or something like that.

Emi.4152:

NinjaEd.3946:

Dee Jay.2460:

You think with all these sweeping changes they might take 15 minutes to fix this thing, but alas, all is vain.

Sadly they want LR to grant stealth, they just can’t graps the fact that reveal is unavoidable when up against a trait that has 0 cast time and no method of activating it yourself. I remember reading a post that they do not want the 1 point SA minor trait to grant anything but stealth. I wish I could find that thread, but it was briefly discussed and a long long time ago.

but… but… LR doesn’t grant stealth does it? i thought it granted reveal? Oo

Yeah we’ve been trying to tell them that for awhile now. Even if the trait removed the reveal effect and then applied stealth it wouldn’t matter. The trait is naturally flawed by their design of stealth :/

Dee Jay.2460:

You think with all these sweeping changes they might take 15 minutes to fix this thing, but alas, all is vain.

Sadly they want LR to grant stealth, they just can’t graps the fact that reveal is unavoidable when up against a trait that has 0 cast time and no method of activating it yourself. I remember reading a post that they do not want the 1 point SA minor trait to grant anything but stealth. I wish I could find that thread, but it was briefly discussed and a long long time ago.

Even without a target, it does this to me time to time. I can’t recreate the event let alone know what is setting it off, because it is random. Lag, no lag, enemy nearby, ooc, doesn’t matter. Randomly it just redirects me backwards against my choosing.

Add this to the list of thief bugs and hope we get a response before 2015.

But its free for the taking in pvp!

In wvw however, just wait till they re-introduce the sigil or a recipe and lower the prices. Likely during the winter time.

I don’t think healing skills were added to promote our class diversity as much as eliminate what anet viewed as an outdated system (heal tank dps). Then again, it doesn’t seem like things went to plan so its no shock that people are against it to this day. It has more to do with the content though than the class’s although both are certainly an issue.

It still doesn’t explain why engineer gets to bend the rules through “technology” but a guardian with spells can’t mimic the effects. Spirits can be tied to any number of themes, whether its dark, light, undead, resurrection, etc. Not to nit pick but if we’re going by “arcane” the spirit weapons are literally called “arcane ____” in their tool tip. It’s a magic of sorts.

Engineer gets to push confusion out of a bullet which makes little logical sense, a thief can hit and back-step applying torment which doesn’t really make much sense. Not all condition applications make rational sense, and they can’t because it would take much longer to make thematically correct skills and balance out builds. I couldn’t possibly imagine a longer window between balance patches if they went by that standard.

Same way a trap can somehow summon cold air and chill foes, hence I suggested chill on symbol creation (with an ICD). Spirit weapons are magical, weak, and need a place so I figured give them an application and considering their long cooldown already it seemed balanced and fitting. Chains are constricting and can cause fear like shaking hence chill on immobilize( also with an ICD). The chill on hammer strikes if anything makes the least sense but it was already there so I figured I go with it.

Lazze.9870:

NinjaEd.3946:

-Powerful blades: Removed for being poorly placed and generally useless.

Exactly how is this trait being poorly placed? Did you even look at the trait line?

I’m not even gonna question the second part of your statement, it’s just wrong.

It’s poorly placed because power builds have no reason to dedicate 4 trait points in a condition trait line to a weapon that applies 0 conditions (outside of a blind). If sword applied bleed perhaps it would be alright.

Burn alone is not that great and without some form of reapplying the poison, sigil of doom isn’t sufficient enough either. Condi guardian isn’t viable because it has little of a variety of conditions to put out (dmg conditions are prioritized when removed) and there is little application of them to start with. Virtue of justice helps a ton but again it lacks the variety.

I still don’t see how chill is somehow related to death, and if its related to elements as Bhawb states, guardian does use magic. Even so, engineer gets chill and they have no magic. Thief gets chill from ice drake venom and they have no association with dark magic. Burn most certainly does not mean life although its entirely a debate of perception. Some games have burn adding some sort of healing (pyromancy from dark souls for instance) yet it is there for destruction as well. There are even games that display cult-like creatures studying flames, even the flame legion which most certainly don’t use fire for good reasons. Either way, it isn’t tied to 1 personality. Also guardian does have “spirit” weapons which can be perceived as a “dark” art since it is bringing something to life.

I see chill in this game mostly perceived as an element with a few cases of it relating to “dark” magic. From that, I thought it could behave as a study a.k.a traits to form a build. Notice I didn’t suggest any weapon skills to apply chill and every chill related trait has an ICD. Basically it would be something many guardian builds can work around without restructuring their weapon skills for a condition that already has a ton of pressure associated with it. It would be similar to terror in the sense that it adds a source of damage to work with but it would not be spammable outside of a quick burst. Even so, the traits are placed in places that would make the guardian incredibly squishy if they decided to do so.

It helps condi guardian (not fixes) and gives a bonus towards a known guardian weakness, being kited. Regardless the uptime on chill would not be all that long and there are already numerous skills that directly remove chill.

Pregnantman.8259:

Reanimator was merged with a GM trait and it actually makes sense this way. The trait, Death Nova, originally caused your minions (and yourself when downed) to explode upon death. With it being merged with Reanimator, you can spawn minions by yourself so they can explode.

Assuming Anet noticed this thread and decided to merge this trait with a major trait in Shadow Arts, which major trait would you like Last Refuge to be with?

Infusion of shadows. I never take it anyways, but at least open the door to something new for the 1 point minor trait.

I’d rather see our current skills and traits all made relevant before they send a shipment of new toys for us. A skill here and there doesn’t hurt though.

silentnight warrior.2714:

NinjaEd.3946:

Deimos Tel Arin.7391:

there is nothing wrong with healing signet, it is working as intended.
it is a signet, and signet have strong passive effects.

warrior are intended, designed to face tank damage with healing signet along others because they do not have active access to aegis, stealth, chaos armor, illusions, death shroud, turrets, minions, infinite evades etc.

seriously, play a warrior in team arena at least 100 times before anyone of you warrior hater comes in here to comment further on healing signet.

http://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Signet_of_Mercy

And the ToL showed us just how important warrior is. It’s not paranoia, its fact.

Also I doubt the entire warrior class was designed to have only healing signet. Sorry, but arguing the balance of HS by saying they deserve to face tank with it is no argument at all. Even with no healing power gear HS does a far better job than the others, and the mentality to never use the active of healing signet just further shows how strong the passive is.

Can you link the video of ToL? The one i saw showed warrior being important as other classes there.

http://www.twitch.tv/guildwars2/b/523635495

Not sure what the video you linked was supposed to show, other than that red team had no warrior and was pushed out of mid several times. Not saying 55 hp monk’s warrior was their core, but the aoe control and sustain he had certainly helped them keep their numbers up.

No point in linking just 1 video, since multiple videos showed teams having either 1 or sometimes even 2 hambow warriors. I could link the site with the team’s and their comps though.

http://mistpedia.net/mediawiki/index.php/Tournament_of_Legends

Notice the amount of warriors O.o

Outside of adding a new condition which is unlikely for the sake of 1 profession, its difficult seeing any potential for guardian condition or guardian hybrid. Burn requires heavy investing into some trait lines that don’t give guardian the sturdiness they need. The retaliation set up is in the same boat, taking up a ton of sustain for heavy investments. I understand every build needs to make sacrafises in some places but guardian can hover most of their points in the last 3 tree’s and still come out like a brute.

Poison doesn’t fit guardian, torment most certainly doesn’t, confusion nope, bleeds maybe. All I know is burn isn’t enough, and chill helps guardians get to their target easier since we are a class who is generally easy to kite. If the build is meant to put out pressure it’s almost moot if they can sit far back and just avoid you entirely, there needs to be some danger zone for the enemy against such a build. It would also be unique to them so it doesn’t just seem like a weaker version of warrior condi. Like I said, this suggestion isn’t aimed to solve guardian condi only help it’s wheels start turning. Mix in some bleed application with this and I can see a full condi set up being “viable”.

Some builds I thought of with the suggested changes (based on the ideas rather than the numerical values)

Hybrid- http://gw2skills.net/editor/?fVAQNAS7dl0ApSotCxWI8DRB+QZ5E8BVGAFAWBxltQQC-TphBwAAuAAaOCA82f4bZgIPAgMHEAA

Strict condi- http://gw2skills.net/editor/?fVAQNAS7dlsApSoNDxVI8DRB9QlZXciWvBnwiWVAgVSA-TphBwAAuAAnLDkb/h9HBgIPAgMHEAA

Deimos Tel Arin.7391:

there is nothing wrong with healing signet, it is working as intended.
it is a signet, and signet have strong passive effects.

warrior are intended, designed to face tank damage with healing signet along others because they do not have active access to aegis, stealth, chaos armor, illusions, death shroud, turrets, minions, infinite evades etc.

seriously, play a warrior in team arena at least 100 times before anyone of you warrior hater comes in here to comment further on healing signet.

http://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Signet_of_Mercy

And the ToL showed us just how important warrior is. It’s not paranoia, its fact.

Also I doubt the entire warrior class was designed to have only healing signet. Sorry, but arguing the balance of HS by saying they deserve to face tank with it is no argument at all. Even with no healing power gear HS does a far better job than the others, and the mentality to never use the active of healing signet just further shows how strong the passive is.

There certainly would be a chill burst potential, but the ICD would prevent such a burst from being possibly for sometime after. Perhaps even longer ICD, only reason I left them somewhat low is because the damage is much lower than terror, and it isn’t meant for a strict condi build.

There are certainly some conflicting values here, but the suggested numbers are a fraction of the importance of the chill trait modifier.

With sigil of ice (chill on crit), sigil of chilling (20% chill duration) and chill duration runes (20-30%, ice ele and grenth being the only 3 that look promising) and condi duration I can see it becoming a problem :S

I label it singular because all we really got is burn

tl:dr ahead

I’ve thought about guardian build diversity for some time now since I made one for pvp months ago and just recently hit 80. ATM I see 2 options, dps or tank. I don’t care to sit on a point and tank or to run in circles in a 40v1 in wvw, so I went with a dps route. As fun as meditations and sword/torch is it has become increasingly stale to me, something GS worsened. In other words, only thing I haven’t tried that I’d like to is conditions however even with the new retaliation-> condi damage trait it’s just too pathetic. There is no variety, and thematically it’s hard to add anything like poison or torment to a holy-archtype. So, it got me thinking about other condi modifiers… and it hit me. Chill

Long story short, a rework to some traits and skill behaviors to make chill behave like fear DoT(aka terror), however a lot less. Reason being it’s relatively short but it is more widely accessibly. It can fit guardian thematically seeing as how they already have a trait associated with it while also giving room for more access. It also would be centered on trait selection rather than weapon sets

tl:dr

[Traits]
-Powerful blades: Removed for being poorly placed and generally useless. New trait [Bitter Cold] Chill now deals damage. Formula (0.28) x condition damage ratio (30% less than terror w/ other conditions.)

-Eternal Spirit: additional effect, apply chill on spirit weapon commands. Chill duration 4 seconds. (bow will apply 1 second for every second in the aoe with the change to the command)

-Inner fire: Changed for unreliability purposes. New trait [Frozen Stance] Immobilizing a foe applies chill. Chill duration 2 seconds. ICD 30 seconds.

-Revenge of the fallen: Removed for obvious reasons. New trait [Symbolic Burst] Symbols cause chill on creation. Chill duration 1.5 seconds. ICD 10 seconds.

-Glacial Heart: reduce ICD to 25 seconds.

[Utility Skills]

-Bow of truth (command): Condensed duration to 4 seconds. A small aoe accompanied by a small heal has little incentive to take cover against AoE attacks. 4 seconds also makes the new trait effect for Eternal spirits balanced.

Conclusion: There would be options to chill application, but they would not be stackable without numerous sacrifices in defensive traits. In addition to runes that increase chill duration or apply chill, sigils that apply chill, there may need some tweaking to the suggestions above.

Ultimately guardian condi would not be solved by this alone, but a hybrid option or just a general step in the right direction seems plausible. Perma chill would not be possible for a number of reasons, such as ICD’s and the fact that there would be a small variety in conditions applied making condition removal quite simple. Additionally, the idea is to not have long chill durations similar to terror. The fact that it reduces cooldown recharge rates and impairs mobility is the reason for it’s moderately low DoT and the external access to it being the reason for it’s limiting application via guardian.

Thoughts?

Krisztian.8405:

The solution to the healing signet is called, “superior sigil of doom.” It has an ICD of 9 seconds, and a base duration of 6 seconds. Your next attack after you swap weapons, poisons. With 50% condition duration provided by food (koi cakes) and toxic oils, stones, or crystals, you can make it near permanent.

Just burst, swap weapons, and poison. The charge doesn’t leave if they dodge, just try again. I mean what are the warrior going to do, blind spam you?, go into stealth?, distract you with clones?, make you accidentally use the charge on a pet or an army of minions?

If they run away, then you’ve won.

Remember when they used to say that when fighting thieves….I guess that rule is still in effect. :P

And then their solution to that is – condition duration food, + constant condition removal. Ultimately you would of gotten nowhere by slotting that sigil. It helps, but in no way is it a solution to dealing with healing signet.

Harper.4173:

Considering healing signet was initially buffed in order to give warriors access to passive sustain i don’t see why it should be changed.
There are active heal options out there for those who are interested in an active heal ( although some of them could use some improvements).

HS has enough trade-off with a high susceptibility to bursts which you can’t really react to.

If you want to improve healing skills for warriors – look at the active heals. There’s a good place to start.

There is no point in buffing just the active of HS when the passive is this strong. The fact that you don’t have to press anything and get ~400 hps on an already high defense high condition removal class just adds insult to injury.

Healing signet should not be a universal choice for warrior considering the low risk associated with slotting it. In other words, have it work GREAT with healing power, but otherwise be incredibly lousy.

For example, 280 passive base with a .2 healing power scale (1,100 healing power would mean 500 hps, hence the trade off). Then rework the active to a semi-strong flat heal that breaks stun to start casting. Sort of how shadow trap works, where it “breaks stun” but you still have that window of cast time before the effect takes place. I think that would be an attractive active considering you give it up for high HPS.

I do not think healing signet should work on offensive builds, period. If they want to be tanky and I mean incredibly tanky then healing signet would do wonders but outside of that, it should be entirely about decisions. Too much passive play with warrior as it is.

I know they attempted to address this back in april, but is there plans to further balance them soon-ish?

Between build posts, and TP prices of runes/sigils it’s quite obvious what’s hot and what’s not. I don’t know the procedure for updating a value on a rune or sigil or its functionality for games but imho its the easiest first step in addressing balance since they don’t have to follow any profession theme making it more flexible to changes.

Bottom line, a lot of bad runes/sigils and a few good. Also quite a few copy/paste/“change name” runes.

P.S Thank you for addressing strength runes. Took a while, but still a fair change to an obvious problem.

We’re a pretty annoying sub forum, I imagine they intentionally avoid us among others. I bet they look at us once in a while like a business card in the back of a wallet.

“What is this doing here?”