Guild Wars 2

Some interesting ideas there.

Overall, I think weapon changes aren’t a priority, nor are the base stats like HP. Every weapon has a use and the lower base stats are made up for with intrinsic healing ability. I do wish that GS was a little more focused.

I would like some rethinks on some trait stats and the traits themselves.

1. The bonus to trait recharge isn’t very useful if you want to run passive virtues for Virtue
2. Valour traitline is too hard to get away from.
3. Zeal isn’t general enough to benefit more builds.

I think adjusting traits would go a long way to improving the variety and appeal of Guardian gameplay.

Mike.7236:

The problem is, all prices are permanently depressed to levels where no in-game economic activity really makes much sense as a source of income.

I tried to follow you but I couldn’t help but coming back to this original statement. It’s simply not true. The context of my claim is simple … I decided for the first time since the game has started that I would try to flip some things. It worked. Not only did it work over a very short buy/sell period (2 days) but I increased my small amount of capital from 6G to 10G including some additional, valuable mats I hung on to. Is my singular experience relevant to the general population? Probably not, but should it be? Does the economy NEED to make everyone easy money to not be broken? I don’t think so.

My point: if the economy is fundamentally broken, then it should probably stay that way. If someone like me can make money working it on a low capital, short term flip exercise, I can only imagine what a more dedicated effort would yield.

Mike.7236:

Out of all MMO’s I’ve played, I can’t remember a single one where I was so hopelessly flat-out broke all the time. Even minor gold sinks like travel costs are a substantial barrier to use in GW2. The GW2 player basically lives off vendor trashing junk drops, and quick travel is a luxury that must be used in moderation.

I think I see what your problem is … did you actually gather anything and sell it? Just a simple run in ore and berries will give 20 silver.

JaironKalach.4938:

Ah…. So… The theory is:

Bots farm gold
Bots sell gold to unscrupulous players
Unscrupulous players buy gems using their (discounted) gold, therefore driving up gem prices.

The conclusion being that ANet should track the effect of the gem purchases from those players who bought the ill-gotten gold from bots.

Thanks for the summary. I see the fallacy. Problem here is that gold doesn’t discriminate. Gems bought with legit or black market gold are the same. So if black market gold drives gem prices, so does legit gold. Question is what the ratio of Black market gold is to legit. Of course, if you think Anet only lies to us always, you have already convinced yourself that bots are manipulating the whole economy.

I don’t think I’m saying anything new here, but the question is rather interesting: What if bots ARE running our economy? Is there anything indicative in the behaviour of the economy ingame that would suggest one way or the other?

I personally don’t see it. Whether someone is a bot or ‘real’ player is completely transparent to me. If a bot draws in gold/mats at a rate that would be equivalent to 10 players, then to me as an outside observer, it just looks like 10 players. I have no indication that any particular material/gold comes from a particular source. It doesn’t impact the game either … the revenue isn’t made from monthly subs so from a publisher POV, it also looks like 10 players. A bot doesn’t affect the rate of resource generation anymore than an equivalent number of players does.

I’m going to walk the dog and have a cigar to think a bit more about it. I don’t think bots matter .. they simply appear as super automated players making money.

I’m amused by players attempting to fish for the answer they want to hear from a game dev who’s obviously smart enough to know that’s what the players are attempting to do.

I think the bottom line is that some information are simply out of reach for players. it doesn’t mean there is a conspiracy or we are being lied to. It doesn’t matter anyways considering that some people are even willing to question truths they are being told. Apparently nothing will appease that insanity.

AsK yourself two things:

1. What purpose would it serve if Anet was lying to you? Personally, I don’t see any. Do you really think they go out of their way to let us talk to a dev? Thinking Anet is lying to you is a rather obtuse position to have.
2. What convinces you they are telling the truth or lying? If it’s based on your own personal observation, you should really re-evaluate your godly self-awareness. maybe I’m just talking out my rear end but I don’t think anyone’s personal observation is an accurate reflection of what’s happening in-game.

That’s an inaccurate description of how Anet operates, at least with respect to Guardians.

You are right though, I see more pressing issues than to make every weapon do everything people want it to be.

Maybe we should start setting our calender to these threads. Consistently one a week, and each having the same lack of background.

Each weapon has a purpose. Learn what they are before claiming they are ‘truly lacking’. Sword certainly isn’t truly lacking though there is room for (small) improvement. Being sensational doesn’t make the case any stronger.

I guess you missed the part where the devs have data and you don’t. Regardless of what you observed, I doubt you have anything that puts it into a scale relevant for the discussion. No one doubts there were botters. The question is how big an impact they had. I’m betting the guys with the data know better than you.

If you can’t figure out how to use the market, don’t QQ about it.

Can you remind me of where or what that is?

anyone know if they added a point of interest to the game? i’m missing just one for map completion

haviz.1340:

The whole point of my exposition was to make you (and others) realize that going 30 in valor for critical damage isn’t always the best case scenario for dps reasons.

Valour 30 gives a flat 8% damage increase (based on wiki crit chart) at level 80 with only base precision. In all honesty I’m sure you are right. Based PURELY on DPS reasons, if you had to decide where to put your last 30 traits, it would be Zeal, especially with GS. That’s the only thing I can think of that’s better for damage than 30 Valour.

I think where that view falls apart is that you have more than 30 traits to spend and for overall value, 30 Valour is way better than 30 Zeal. The max performance build has more factors than DPS. Valout 30 is really hard to get away from because everything in it is useful for almost any build you want to make.

I can’t see getting away from a 0/15/30/20/5 build for a super performance build (not really the right words, but I understand the intent of the thread). It’s versatile with any weapon you choose. It allows to optimize shouts and meditations. It’s extra healing and team benefits. It’s a super increase to active Virtues. Not sure anything could be better.

I’ve tried to run with X/X/30/X/20. It just didn’t have the feel, like I was always a bit shy of having an option at any moment. If I put the 20 honor, I didn’t like my damage, if I put 15 in radiance, I flirted with big hits.

I think the idea that certain traits should be used with certain weapons is self-imposed and limiting. It seems that the thinking behind the question of the thread stems from this philosophy of making a build. Since the premise of being ‘forced’ to play with a certain weapon is nonsense to begin with, I can’t help but think that make builds around a single weapon is somehow flawed or limiting as well. We can swap weapons on the fly to address changing situations, not builds.

I can’t help but think that the whole time I have played my thief, that was an abuse of stealth. The only thing that makes you lose aggro is range or another player. I don’t see why it should be any different for thieves. LoS or stealth shouldn’t allow you to manipulate aggro.

Interesting challenge. I haven’t put much thought to a mace build. I do see that I could ween you from valour 30. It would also make sense to capitalize on all the healing and boons you get from it.

I would probably start with a vanilla 0/0/10/30/30, all clerics/sapphire set of gear, Dwayna runes, Life/Restoration Sigil. Pretty boring stuff. I would probably see how I could modify that for better burning or more criting, though I think the critting would be weak since I didn’t spend any traits on crit stats.

Iove.3902:

Apparently you never ran Staff with Altruistic Healing. 3k+ heals on people with Regen/Boons/ and Healing Breeze. I keep my group alive with heals and CC in WvW all the time. Sure there are actually no ‘real’ healers, but this is what we got to work with and I’d call giving people health, healing.

If I’m a guardian and I decide to play as close to a dedicated healer as I can, like staff, etc … then I can’t help but feel that I’m actually sending a message to my whole team that they aren’t capable enough to handle themselves in a dungeon or a fight and undervaluing their toolset. That’s my hang up and I know alot of people don’t care, as long as they get the content done. I’m certainly not trying to tell anyone how to play here. I just question the motives of a Guardian trying to play that role when it’s not necessary to do so due to the game’s design.

I’m not dismissing Mist info. If possible, I would like a more direct method to see tests and results that I don’t have to infer from a sterile, non-representative environment. Real mobs move out of symbols, stun, knock you down, chill you, etc … All that affects your damage. It could affect your damage for different weapons depending on duration of execution or time length of an attack.

For example, Sceptre up close is pretty good. Sceptre against a mob that runs at you is good too. Sceptre on a mob that runs perpendicular to you screws you completely. At best, Mists gives you the maximum possible damage output. Depending on the real game situation, your damage might fall from that maximum or not at all.

Bloodgruve.6038:

I’ve spent hours on testing in the Mists with different classes, weapons, specs and gear.

I’m happy to see people doing testing. Testing is good, data is good. I wish it wasn’t done in the mists. It’s the least representative method for assessing real ingame weapon damage. Golems do not mimic the way PVE or PVP mobs behave in the game. Therefore, when you fight them, you aren’t behaving like you would in the game either. That affects your damage. If this tests can be done in actual game conditions, it would be more accurate. Then there is a question of playstyle.

I’m not one for searching but the real indicator of damage between weapons is to use the damage coefficients. Thanks to foofad, we have those somewhere in a thread in this forum. At first glance, it’s a reasonable ranking of weapon damage. IIRC, hammer wasn’t far behind GS.

The real indicator of damage in game is to fight different kinds of mobs, parse your damage chat log and do some math on it. (Maybe that can’t be done in GW2). Of course, that’s not going to tell you if a weapon is better than another but it does say something about your build.

Check out http://dulfy.net/2013/02/06/gw2-focus-skins-gallery/

You probably want flux Matrix or Bloodseeker.

That build came about from being frustrated trying to use GS to tag mobs in events. Hitting once with Mighty Blow is a guaranteed tag. It closes range, it’s true AoE and it applies it’s damage faster than Whirling Blades.

Technically, GS does more damage than hammer. In practical application, I make up for that with a higher and longer burn. It works. I could use GS with that build just as easily as Hammer. I would get some might stacks and it would work faster but considering I’m killing trash mobs in Orr, it’s a wash.

Hammer has it’s uses. Damage isn’t everything. I believe if people made builds to match the content they are doing, then they would find that GS isn’t the be all end all weapon they claim it is. Maybe that’s why I’m poor, have too many sets of armor and not enough space in my bags to hold it all.

Sure, check my sig. That’s one of them. Don’t bother to check it though, I’m sure your just going to tell me it’s uber crap since I’m not using GS and don’t have 20 in Honour. :p

Glad I don’t make standard hammer builds. I wouldn’t want anyone to mistake me for one of those gimp hammer users ><

Seriously though, you don’t need 20 in honour for hammer to be ‘decent’. An extra tick on symbol isn’t going to differentiate it’s damage from another weapon. Maybe if the kill cycle for most mobs was on the order of ticks on a symbol, you would have a point. But then again, hammer symbol does down alot more frequently than a GS symbol. It evens out. It’s not like there are orders of magnitude difference here. I estimate a typical damage variation between them at about 10%.

Yes, GS does more attacks that have damage. That’s not relevant because your attacks flow in a serial manner regardless of weapon. You don’t do more damage just because you have more attacks that make damage.

Alarox.4590:

So basically Spirit Weapons get nerfed into oblivion, ArenaNet buffs them very slightly, we eat it up and forget about how useless they are?

Called it.

Actually, to be fair, we said they would need more HP after the nerf, Anet listened and did it. That exceeds my expectation. Are they useful? They weren’t much use BEFORE the nerf.

What you are seeing here is the best way any developer can make a change; nerf THEN adjust for missing capability to ensure no period of time ingame where something in transition might be OPed or bugged. They aren’t going to avoid QQ anyways, so might as well the do the change from the bottom up. Thank you Anet.

Actually, playing the game isn’t at all very good qualifier of how much more damage any one weapon does than another, especially when the weapons are close in damage as it is. It gives you some feeling of it but of course, that’s all wrapped up with your gear and traits as well.

My feeling is that when I play GS and hammer, they are pretty even in damage output because stuff dies just as fast with either. If you look at the pure numbers (people have already done this, there isn’t a need to argue about it) it tells a similar story.

fishergrip.4082:

You can make any build work ok for PvE farming, but that doesn’t mean its actually good.

That’s a true statement in some cases but specifically pertaining to burning builds and Guardians, you are wrong. There are burning builds that are good for PVE farming. I use them, apparently others do as well.

Burning recharge is too long, uptime isn’t long enough and a single condition is too easily removed for it to be good enough to be more than a nuisance in PvP.

If you use VoJ in passive mode with Supreme Justice Trait and a fast acting weapon, you might make a bigger dent in someone.

I would think the basis for an anti condition build would consist of runes of melandru and bowls of lemongrass poultry soup. Lyssa is about benefits from boons. It seems like a real one trick thing to couple that with Renewed Focus to remove conditions. Conditions are easier to apply than they are to remove. It’s a better strategy to make them harder to stick than to remove them.

That’s nonsense. You don’t need access to bleed stacking or more damage conditions to make a good condition build with a guardian for a few reasons.

1. Condition damage on a guardian isn’t meant to be the primary damage source, unlike thief for instance.
2. It’s not a requirement to have more than one source of condition damage to make a good condition damage build.

These things mean that a good CD build on a guardian is about enhancing an already existing secondary, parallel damage source to take advantage of the condition damage benefits. If you recognize burning for what it does, you realize where it’s useful and how to get the most from it.

I found burning to be most effective in general orr farming, pve stuff. I’ve tried seom AoE burning tricks in WvW but it wasn’t all that effective. My PVE burning build is in my signature.

Amins.3710:

Nerf the only things keeping us alive.

Wonderfully thought out.

How about buff the other traitlines to bring them on par?

Well for starts, tone down the level of sensationalism.

Secondly, this isn’t the only thing keeping us alive. Yes, it’s awesome. That’s why it’s not unreasonable to think it’s TOO awesome and wouldn’t leave us going for the alternatives. The AH build is pretty situational and MF is constricting. Survival is more than just valor 30. Guardian is a deeper class that this.

Thirdly, yes it would be reasonable to consider where a balance could be achieved over other traits. If that was actually in the scope of this thread, I might have gone there but it’s not.

JEEZ.

Sure. Did anyone argue they weren’t? Maybe people have different points of view or wish to define support their own way. I don’t think that has any impact on the fundamental point of discussion here which was to drive home the idea that AH has a significant and sole role in support builds and is therefore a support tool. I think a more practical question is what are better support tools than others. For example, I’m certain a meditation/MF build isn’t nearly as supportive as shouts/AH for keeping you alive as well as directly booning your team.

I think the underlying theme of the thread is that Guardians shouldn’t be pigeonholed into some role that doesn’t actually exist in the game from a traditional standpoint. It sets a bad expectation for players that aren’t aware of the class, thinking that a Guardian will save anything from complete failure or accepting modes of play that undervalue Guardians in the general psyche of the playerbase. Perhaps the whole AH/support discussion is a little sidetracked but still relevant to the original point.

I’m a hair away from suggesting that valour traitline in general, needs some toning down because it does play so prominent a role in builds. I do have to agree that if you are doing AH, you need Virtue 5 if the goal is to optimize.

When I do go with a virtue 20 build, usually I feel that I can push a bit more of an offensive gearload to make up for missing trait points in Zeal or Radiance. Truth be told, I have only one build that uses Zeal (see sig link), it’s a favourite but it has limited application. I actually dislike the paradox between having to choose between the passive and active Virtue abilities so I don’t tend to spend in Virtue alot.

I won’t argue some of the strong opinions I see promoting GS posted here but it is worth saying that all the other weapons have their place and no, not everyone uses GS. I don’t use GS much actually. Hammer tags better in events and mass mob situations and almost permanent protection makes up for any build I make with a complete lack of defensive stats. Mace is super healy with offhand support, Sceptre for range. Sword + anything gives me the ability to be extremely flexible with 3 possible offhands and sigils.

Personally I think the GS is so widely used because it’s not super specialized while providing some key features. It’s a very generalist weapon that appeals to a generalist playstyle.

Amins.3710:

I’ll state the obvious again: AH in and of itself, does NOT support your group.

Please try to argue this fact some more.

You’re just splitting hairs. Call it whatever you want. If you’re alive, your supporting your team. AH keeps you alive. If ANYONE in your team is staying alive, they are supporting the team.

It’s primary support because:

1. It’s optimized for team-based play spreading out boons. No one will argue that’s not a key tactic for supporting the team. Every Guardian build focused on support will feature something to give the team boons.
2. It’s not very good healing when you aren’t doing that. It would be difficult to claim that AH would be used in anything BUT a supporting build. Solo, it’s on par with our passive VoR.

AH is just there to keep you alive so it’s not support? That’s a rather ridiculous position. A persons ability to keep themselves alive is one of the most fundamental team support functions that they should be performing. The fact that I go down the LEAST of all other people I have teamed with in my AH supporting build makes AH play a HUGE supporting role in my team based play.

If you think there are other supportive builds that are better, that’s fine. I won’t debate that. That doesn’t degrade the significance of AH in support builds as a trait that supports the team by keeping you alive. The collective experience on that matter is quite extensive.

Amins.3710:

Why you try to put AH into a “Group Support Role” is beyond me. It’s not support. So stop trying to put it there and move on.

Um what? Putting AH in a group support role is the ONLY place it fits. No AH build is worth a crap unless you are supporting a team with boons from as many sources as you can get. It’s not nearly as good as Monk’s for soloing. By default, if you are talking about AH, you should only be referring about a group supporting build. It’s effectiveness is lost for anything else.

I’m seeing a lot of sensational posts in this thread. It’s a little disappointing. I’m all for playing how you choose. Expanding that sphere of consideration will allow people to realize that there is a greater good to bringing value to your team through the tools of your profession. If a person can’t do that, I don’t understand why they would choose to play a guardian to being with.

Back to the topic: I think the title is a little misleading. Yes Guardians are healers and kitten good ones but in GW2, healers aren’t the traditional kind everyone experienced in MMO’s is used to.

Yes, they are. At least it says they are and they were in the past. AFIAK, this hasn’t been changed.

Something weird is going on … I can apply burning to Embers as well.

I don’t get the blindness icon on my targets anymore. Seemed to happen since the last update. I’m also getting hit. Anyone else noticing this?

It’s weird you got singled out. I guess some people just expect everything to go absolutely swimmingly if they get a guardian in team.

Colin isn’t a dev so it wasn’t really a good question to ask him in the first place. If players want specific information about design decisions for something ingame, he’s not the guy to ask. If the guy asking that question was more experienced, he should have known that. He did the right thing to dodge it … he didn’t appear to know the answer.

If you need a thread of convincing to play a class, you shouldn’t play it.

You know, it seems to me that very few people entertain the possibility that we lack “stuff” by design. In otherwords, it’s on purpose that we don’t have good long range capability, mobility, etc… . The answers to this stuff is always vague.

I think the problem is related to the relative strength and survivability of other metabuilds compared to the ones that benefit from stealth. That makes the default option exploiting anything that gives and uses stealth. Hence the stacking of all the stealth traits and stealth attacks.

Maybe if conditions or venoms weren’t so reliant on traiting or easily ignored, stealth wouldn’t be such an issue.

I find many of the items are too similar. I don’t see a purpose for 6 rings that are PVT.

Clearly my complaint about the mace isn’t registering. I’m complaining that weapons like the mace are pushing too far against the philosophy that there is no Holy trinity in this game. I think the mace is too focused on healing and those heals are easily transferred to your team, allowing complacency. That’s a matter of opinion but I don’t think that’s a good thing for the game.

Yes, you can make a build to prove you can make the mace do alot of damage. Those would be an exception to any trend, not setting it. I believe the reason why you don’t see mace damage trending is simply as I have stated.

Tyber Valens.5148:

Sierra.6352:

Oh for the love of everything good and nice. This is exactly what Anet didn’t want in their game.
That people had to pull up their calculators before a fight, to figure out what would be the most effecient way to build their characters, instead of just jumping into battle and rely on their skills to pay the bills.

Ah well, at least we don’t have silly addons like GearScore or damage meters, like you had in WoW.

No one is forcing you to use this builder. Nothing wrong crunching numbers before buying gear.

Especially since a full set of exotic gear with runes/weapons is about 50 gold right now. If Anet wants people to play with gear instead of calculators, maybe they should rethink their approach to obtaining loot in the game.

Weapons like mace it moves guardians away from support role into allowing teams to be dependent on them, like the difference between walking with a cane and riding a motorized scooter. There is no holy trinity in this game. The mace is EXACTLY the kind of weapon that you would use ONLY if you were a healer in a holy trinity setting. That’s why I think its trash.

^^ as I suspected, the Mace just makes you a heal totem. To me, that’s a serious problem. I think it crosses the line between having a place in an arsenal and dictating what kind of build you make with it. If you aren’t specing healing power, it’s pretty trash. That’s all it’s good for. Maybe if there was a more offensive offhand, it would offset that issue.

I don’t see a place for using the mace. I feel it’s the weakest weapon we have. No one I know uses it for the damage. It’s a hard case to take it for heals (we have LOTS of intrinsic healing already). If you like the overall defensive nature, your downplaying focus/shield offhands and defensive traits/skills you are probably wielding anyways. I just don’t really get what you gain from it over other more balanced options. It’s only application is a super tank, symbol build to carry a gimp team in PVE.

The whole point with the condition damage approach is to take advantage of the conundrum that a 1 second AOE burn presents to your foe … they either ignore they are burning and all take the hit or they waste Cond removal on a 1 second burn. Maybe it doesn’t sound as sexy as a 3 shot thief backstab combo, but that’s not the point of the healway build from what I can tell anyways.

This approach gives you the ret + the short burn bursts. The burn appeals to me because if your opponent ignores you, your retaliation isn’t useful. Sure you give up some power. You make up with application of a dual damage approach, one being AOE and ignoring removal and defense. I guess you could say you get burning regardless of your CD stat but the AOE aspect of it from Virtue XI makes it so much more attractive to boost it’s stat.

You’re strong/annoying enough to grab significant focus, hard enough to take significant effort to take down and leverage the strengths of both damage paths.