Guild Wars 2

Aegis vs Protection is really a situational boon, one perform good against hard hitting single attacks, the other against hard hitting flurry attacks.

Aegis is in most situations worse however, for protection will still reduce the high hitting skill by 33% while aegis will only reduce a flurry from one attack, taking for instance a Whirling Wrath you would only reduce the damage by 1/7 “not counting projectiles”.

So your idea to change the protection to Aegis would actually result in a worse skill in a lot of situations or at least limit the skill extremely. If Shield 4 would give both boons however, now that would be a nice bonus.

Until you realise that if you play zerker guard and need to heal more than 12k, you my good sir is dead. Same deal in PvP, go full zerker good, you can heal yourself for max hp only to still be oneshotted by a thief.

You guys are insane, there reason spirit weapons are not changed is becouse they are Anet approved. Everything is working as inteended.

Want a Utility that insta dies and goes on 30 second cooldown, pick the sword.

Want a Utility that insta dies and goes on 45 second cooldonw, pick hammer.

Clearly we are considered so strong that we need skills and even traits to buff these skills, why else would they leave them as they are?

Ay, next patch they probaly “buff” us again by causing all our healing abilitys to apply bleed when used. On ourself ofcourse, you thought i meant the enemie?

Jesus sir, we are Guardians. If we have anything close to damage, soft cc or speed theyl make sure we have to sacrifice atleast 5x times the value to get them.

One may instead wonder, what is right about Glacial Heart.

Yes i totaly agree, a 90 second cooldown elite when traited with 30 traits to heal 2k would be really overpowered, it is time we let it go

Virtue as they are now “passive” are terrible. And they do not feel as a Guardian mechanic at all even the active ones ( unless you trait for them ). But if you do trait them, they are really nice and can bring alot to the battlefield.

Main problem right now is that unless you trait them they bring nothing to define our class. And that would maybe be ok, if we had more trait tree’s that would be capable of improving them, but that is not the case currently.

What i would like to see is more diversety in our builds that could potentials buff the virtues.

To be honest i think unless i remember wrong ofcourse, that we are top 3 dps class. Our problem however is that unless you go atleast a little tanky on trait and gear, we also become one of the squishy’iest classes, consider that and the combo of low mobility and almost none movement impairing tools.

These drawback easily make too huge negative impact to play as one, by all means itis doable and even considered rather good with teammates to help us sovle these problems, but in most cases it would however be bether if we support rather than being supported since we got really nice support abilitys.

And pure of voice was bugged before they changed it. It used to remove two condition but it was only supposed to remove one, not what we needed as a bugg fix, but it does open up more builds being viable rather than all Guardians being forced into shout.

It used to be a meditation but changed due to programing complication, i have explained why in a recent post, so i wont explain again.

Renewed focus used to be a meditation back in the old days, but was changed to not benefit and/or count as one since it colided with the old trait: Make meditation instant.

That trait later got changed to grant 4 seconds of fury upon activating a meditation.
And since that day when they changed our Elite skill not to count as anything, either tomes or renewd. We no longer has any trait that directly impact our elites, well we do have one in virtue tree. 50% longer duration.

Yes, yes it is. I find it helpfull to watch movies while playing with it, since that is ussualy the ammount of focus i need to give it.

Im not sure i understand the statement on your “Everything scale the same”. Since Wrath Scales 0.55 with Attack, and Swiftnes, Faith and protection all scale 0.5 with attack, and for base. I allways count Attack rather power, base is base in my eyes.

But your calc is correct, and yes i do assume most of the information on the wiki is correct. The only difference in our calc is the difference what we call base and that i prefer to show each tick, rather than full effect.

Edit: "I might have been slightly aggresive in my writing at first and for that i am sorry, but the main issue as i have now is that Symbol of Wrath vs Symbol of Protection is, Wrath 519 vs target dummy, protection 489 vs target dummy. Hammer has 100% uptime and GS has assuming same traits, 35% uptime. Hammer even colide as it last longer then attack chain.

For me the damage increase is not worth the lack of uptime, and in my eyes protection will be worth alot more than retaliation. Add in that Hammer can also have retaliation with blast finisher."

How am i contradicting myself? From the start i never said anything about our sustain, then it got added and i said that our free is crap. And the other needs a high investment in, so how is that contradicting myself?

So instead you stated a lot of the one i already stated and that is the end of the argument?

And i did also say free, now. I would not say that 30 traits into a tree is a free sustain, balanced and good yes. But free, nope.

-Shield is good for pushing people away, not keeping them in melee.

-Hammer blowout targets one dude with minimal damage, low range and a one second cast time, if they get hit by it then they deserve whatever is coming for them and once again. Push back so that is totally going to help keep you in melee with opponents.

-Hammer Ring is rather nice and the only downside is the annoying stand still wind up 3/4 sec so not terrible. And the bug where people dodge out of it. But beside that, it is really nice.

-Greatsword pull is also really nice indeed, rather obvious and low range to get them in melee but that is about it a really good ability.

-And the wall does not really suffer a lot of weakness, slightly long cooldown but it is a awesome skill so not actually that long, only drawback is once again. The dodge bug where people dodge out of it and it will not really keep people from running away, slight delay yes. But stopping them, no.

-And soft is almost non existent.

Don’t know where you get tons of blinds from, unless you assume you kill a lot of people i can only see three blinds, and one of them has a tedious effect of missing unless in melee.

mitigation and blind is the same thing, but as i can see it if you divide them. I see Aegis, and my though on a one attack block each 40 sec is not that good.

And i don’t see our high sustain either, a 84 (0.06) free sustain is not that good considering we get the lowest base health, sure we can improve it with a trait by about 25% i think, but it is still pitiful. The other sustain would come from what, GS heal 25 for each attack? Symbol heal 107 (0.075), could be rather good depending on what weapon. Altruistic healing, yes awesome sustain but 30 traits locked, or monks focus once again decent burst healing but sustain nope.

Our group support was never in question so you do not really have to bring that up, yet they seem to stealth nerf our support by buffing a lot of other classes support builds, but i never said anything about that.

Hated most old hammer skins cause, long shafts and or wide aswell. But no pummel at the end, but since they added Genesis and its twin, we now have what i think would represent a hammer.

Gaiyeerishima Cat.1082:

Oh my god, reading this is depressing lol. You guys should not be trying to change one of the best elites in the game, for one of the strongest professions in the game. The dev is right, guards are more than usable in top tier pretty much anywhere, and if you don’t think that you must be pretty blind.

Yes i tottaly agree with you, Renewed focus is fine. Probaly as fine as mercifull intervention was back at the start. Alot of people said it was fine, and whoops all of the sudden the dev buffed it by double changed the cooldown by about 60% and trippled it scaling value. So yes, i guess the dev never do misstakes.

So please my good sir, enlighten us blind people how oh how thy think a 90 second cooldown two second channel invurb is the strongest skill in game. Oh please tell us how, thy mighty servents wishes to know.

fadeaway.2807:

“Minor burst”
1016 base damage for a 1 second cast.

Symbol of wrath is amazing and one of the reasons dps guards switch from 1h to greatsword during their rotation. 1h has the higher auto dps, gs provides the spike. Just like the 100b + 1h axe warriors of old.

Please sir tell me where you get your numbers, becouse Guardian GS is not 1016 base damage for one second, it is 925 / 5 for “1/4 second cast rounded down”. So please my good sir, if you want to post numbers. Get your fact right, cause remember kids. Knowing is half the battle.

To be honest i would be fine to play a sluggish class, infact i knew Guardians were exactly that. A slugish melee class, but i did not think we would be sluggish with low health, damage, no vviable CC both soft and hard.

Amen to that, for me Virtues are my panic button. Press them once i know im in bad shape and hope the tiny difference will hold me alive for another heal.

I will admit that if i do specc more for them, they would probably be used alot more, but as it is now. They are my oh kitten buttons.

fadeaway.2807:

You leave our greatsword alone! Incredible dps weapon.
Plus I think you’re forgetting that symbol of wrath is one of the highest dps moves we have on a per time spent casting basis.

I think you are not really knowing the difference between dps and burst, our GS have burst i will agree on that, but as a dps weapon it is terrible.

300 higher base and 10% more power scaling for a +150% longer cooldown is not a dps move. Burst yes, assuming your opponent don’t move or dodge once every 20 second.

Auto attack needs a rework on the might stack, one stack for each mob up to max 3 stacks each 2.7 second and lasting for 5 seconds is terrible, but i will admit that the scaling damage on auto is nice.

Symbol of wrath is terrible compared to other symbols. Long cooldown for a minor burst damage is terrible. Burst is king but not if you get 10% for a 150% longer cooldown.
And i dont even think retaliation is on par with any of the other symbol boons, 150 damage to attackers, well thats nice to bad they hit me for 5k through 3.5k armor.

Virtues has always feelt like three free signets rather than a class unieqe skill that Guardian has, you could use 5 traits to improve them but that is the problem.

The traits are terrible as base values, and using the “We can trait, and yes we can” arguement is kinda invalid. We allready paid to have the Virtues.

We have crappy base health, we have crappy soft CC, we have crappy option to swiftness. And we have crappy hard CC. And our damage is ussualy suffering becouse of the other reasons.

The main problem with Virtues is that you HAVE to trait them if you want good traits, and according to alot of people you HAVE to use renewd focus aswell.

What trait synergi? The 5% more damage does not synergise with anything, and buffing the symbol effect is not a synergi. You could combine the symbol traits in zeal and Honor, that is synergi.

That would be to combine traits to improve synergi, but to do that you need to spend way to many traits only to gain tiny advantages. Especialy since you consider the long cooldown on the GS. For hammer however, it would be alot bether.

Yes, we know that you consider our Virtue of Resolve to be good, so good infact you gave us the lowest tied health pool in line with Thief and Elementalist. 10.8k i belive, and in exchange we have 84 (0.06) health regeneration.

And that is supposed to be if we don’t use the active one. Then we lose out of the passive one, cause having low health for a free crap regeneration was not bad enough allready.

We have staff and dodge roll that scale 100% with healing power, staff problem is being immobile, but on a short cooldown good base healing, and group healing on it, that would be a acceptable drawback.

Dodge heal on the other hand is good for healing ourself, and considering 100% uptime of vigor it has a really short cooldown but it has two drawbacks.

One is that, the dodge itself is more valuable than the healing by itself, so dodging only for the healing may resault in terrible side effects, the other effect is only noticed if you use it for healing teammates. BEcouse yes, it will heal yourself and an additional 4 more friendlies. But they have to be inside 240 radius to recive it, and the base is terrible.

But yes, i find that most healing skills no mather what class recive very little ammount of value from healing power. The only one i consider to be bad for us is Shield healing. And Virtue of Resolve.

I slightly agree with you, sometimes it is awesome, but alot of time. You discover that it heals rather a small ammount considering how easy it is to destroy, and as most other heals, the game mechanics will put it on cooldown even if you only block for 0.001 second.

I think he is refering to the bugg, that appears when there are some short timeout between host and client, as it will happen on rare occasion even when you have a target.

If you do not fall to your death, you ussualy teleports back infront of them, but sometimes. On rare occasions your character and the server reject your reality and decide that jumping off a 500 yard cliff is a bether option rather than fightning.

This is however, not a Guardian only problem, but rather all abilitys that have a leap inbilt in travel skills will on rare occasion behave like above mentioned situation.

I am not saying that GS by itself is bad, sure the 5 sec might on a 2.7 sec chain is neither good or Guardian like.

Or the fact that the Symbol itself deals 10% more scaling damage and 300 base. And in exchange it grants retaliation, and has a 150% longer cooldown compared with mace.

Add that they both gain the same bonuses from the traits, one may wonder what the next brilliant move they will add, maybe increase our best single target dps weapon by 5%, or maybe add that our currently best burst weapon should now also sacrifice offensive stats for more healing.

If said thief who choice when to start the engagement is kittened enough to target a player, and not see the boons. And once again, when they circle the threat and see that they are a Guardian and open up with a stun on first attack. Then my good sir, he deserves to lose cause of his stupidity.

I am not against Aegis visiual however, but using the said statement above is the same as complaining about darwinism.

Ay and big change indeed, it might not seem like much. But as it is now, the dev keep pushing the high meta and the low meta even more apart, limiting us even more to what we choice in most cases.

One might even start assuming they work for the U.S Government as well, that is how wide the gap is starting to become between low class and high class weapons.

Symbol of Wrath is currently in a horrible position, it is the symbol with the longest cd 20 sec, and it does nothing bether than the other.

Il rather have protection, regeneration, and even swiftness would be bether in most situations rathe than retaliation.

It only scales 0.05 more than the other symbol from Attack, but the bonus base is atleast nice. Would mather where you compare it but in most cases the base value is atleast double, around 647 base damage over the ticks.

Add in that they now apparently bugg fixed hammer, (I never though it was a bugg. Having a trait that improves a 3.7 second cast attack by as much as a 20 second cooldown is not balance, that my good friend. Is bullshaaait.

So in my oppinion, GS symbol is extremly terrible compared with the other symbols.

If it gave two boons rather than one it would make sense, but it does not. Not even the damage make any sense.

Ay, and bigger impact on the combo fields, some of them are rather good but alot of them are so crappy.

HarlequinJester.4025:

Guardians are in a nice spot. Be thankful we’re not Rangers.

You my good sir, is high. High as a kite.

The line “you can’t hurt me.” seems more suited to Warriors, but yeah. Everything else in the quotes is correct.

Except the ritualist part, sure we can summon them. But who ever do that with more than five min of experience.

I have the opposite experience, in my full pVt armor, i aggro kittenloads of stuff and they stick to me 95% of the time, and i hit them for about 500. But in zerker they could not bother attacking me at all.

Using a GS in pVt, would normaly use the hammer. But it seems to aggro alot less with hammer rather than GS.

I bet the Anet team is happy where Guardians currently are, especialy considering the best representative for the Guardian stream couldnt even bother to show all the uppdates, or have problem finding the correct utility skills that they did change.

So yeah, in that aspect i am sure Anet team is happy where Guardians are currently. Since so many are playing them.

Funny fact, Purging Flame tooltip say 20% but the buff you get say 33%, wonder witch one it is.

On a side note.
Zealot speed’s Symbol of wrath still states in the description that it gives switfness to allies rather than retaliation. So even after the tooltip fix we apparently got, i still see alot of tooltip that got nothing correct and or displaying wrong values.

Dude give it up, as ussual they baited us to see how we responded. And once again we feel in the developer trap. They do not care at all about Guardians anymore, even less so about the players that choice to play Guardian.

I am starting to belive that Anet has sold the Guardian class to some sort of experiment where they give a singel class the worst options avaliable and then see how many players keep playing them, even though they buff everything else.

Well as long as they dont do something like The Third Wave, it should be fine. Infact il probaly keep playing the game even if they did something like that, when one think about it. Maybe they allready did something like that, but instead off calling it of they keep it going since no one is noticing it.

When i think about it, i do have a inborn hatred for the Azura……

Aegis only combat could be ok, but else it is there so people who don’t know what a boon icon is, still can see that there opponent have it.

Il rather have a miracle where we can get a passive block to proc more than once every 40 sec.

Other 5 people, it will absorb condition from five allies, not 4. As you are not one of the dude it absorbs from.

Cause we probaly are, jesus. Anet could not even get the wiki correct.

Quote:
Virtues have been said to help balance the guardian; for example, they have a lower base health than the warrior profession but compensate for this with their higher health regeneration granted by Virtue of Resolve.
—————————————————————————————————————

Yeah. I guess that is if you account that the Warrior is not using signet, or Shout healing, or 15 trait points into Defense trait.

Then i guess the above statement is true, if a warrior would pick any of the above. Then they have higher regeneration than Guardians.

Sure it is not rewarding yourself if you absorb condition, but it is greatly rewarding the group if you do. As you absorb all conditions that means you can absorb more than the maximum ammount of stacks from your allies, but you will still only recive exactly that. The maximum ammount.

If you want a personal reward for taking the conditions, try using contemplation of purity afterwards.

The purpose for it is not to give yourself boons however. The main purpose of the shout is to save your allies from kitten loads of conditions. The boons you give yourself is a added effect to help you negate the condition you absorb.

People do however use it as a boon shout and that is the main problem of it right now.
For when people do use it and are not expecting to get debuffed like there is no tomorrow. And that is why we call it “Kill myself”.

Sure use it for the boons, but remember. The skill is meant to absorb condition to aid allies. Not to work as a solo multiplier.

Incomingray.8075

You are still assuming to much, and as we all know. Assumption is the father of failure.
Use concrete facts rather than assume a lot.

Not everyone uses boon duration. Not everyone uses Virtue traits, not everyone is fighting against poor enemies.

If you start to calculate with positive bonuses such as your allies give you stability, then you calculate that the opponent can remove it.

And Yes rajule.8054.

As far as i know, all transformation are considered to be so overpowered by Anet that anyone that uses them, lose all weaponskills, Utility skills, healing skills and class specific skills. And that is why we see a lot of Tomes or a lot of Warriors with there transformation, or Norn with racial transformation. Hell i see atleast fifty Azura create Golem suits a day(Not being sarcastic at all)

To be honest, besides Engineer kits who actually work in a awesome way. Tomes are considered the strongest Transformation skills in the game. And we still lose Utility, Healing and Virtue skills while we change to it. Oh and when the tome disappear it will lose the boon no mather the duration, (Courage lose Protection. Wrath lose retaliation)

The active effects are fine, and even awesome when you start to trait them, it is the passive effect that is so lackluster il rather get a free choice from a Warrior trait. One Aegis every 40 sec, 100 HP/s and a burn every 5 attack, yeah.

Feels really sad and not defining our class at all. And yes, Guardian should be about group stuff. But, diversity please. If we want to be selfish we should be able to be so.

To Incomingray.8075.

i will admit that hollowed ground, will directly support you in ways that enemies will have a huge disadvantage to counter, yet i find it weird that you rely on a 80 sec cool down to make a 180 sec cool down effective. I do however have some complains on your other reasoning.

I find it weird that you state that you have to rely on your allies, and yes. We all do rely on our allies for support in different situation. But if you are allowed to rely on your allies to give you stability and protecting you. Are not the enemies allowed to rely on there allies? Or are we talking a 5vs1 situation here, where you need to use the book?

If you can rely on allies to give you stability, I am rather sure. The enemies can rely on allies to strip boons on you as well. For me, skill number 5 in Courage will almost never go off, even when allies give me stability.

But i do however find the book 1: Target area healing
To be awesome.

And 3: Cone regeneration and protection (10) seconds, never add boon duration unless you state you are doing so.
Also awesome.

Number 2: has the potential to be awesome, cure condition and blind foes with bouncing effect, but as we all know it almost never hit its target.

Number 4 lack the same problem 5 do, cast time and have to stand still. 4 is a lot faster however and usually it will go off but not as often as you would like. What i find the book do as a awesome job however, is that it will lure hostiles away and make you into a sponge for almost all damage, and considering the +1000 toughness and +50% max health(think it is a % increase on toughness, but I am not sure.). It really do work wonders, especially since they can’t ignore you as well.

Aegis is most of the time terrible, why. Well it is supposed to be used against attacks that are powerful but easily spotted through animation, and that is the problem. Currently we have dodge for that.

It does not help that our other block attack combined with Aegis will strip one charge from both but only block one attack, add to that that dodge has a cool down of 10 seconds if you do not have vigor, and Aegis has a 40 second passive without trait. If you use The active it has a 45 second cool down(90 second cool down but once the cool down go off you instantly gain Aegis, so not a true 45 sec cd. but 2x aegis on a 90 sec). Our shout that grants Aegis got a 60 second cool down.

It is really easy to see the main problem with Aegis, it could have been a cool thing but as it is now it is extremely terrible. We could only hope that people who designed this notice the problem rather than trying to fix a skill that is so situational it is really really sad.

The only benefit of Aegis vs Dodge right now is that, you can not dodge while immobilized, and our barely worth skill that gives small effects when procing Aegis. This would be cool if we had it more often.

Oh and on a side note on Aegis vs Protection, most attacks are flurry rather than hard hitting, if you absorb 3x attacks each dealing 333 damage you will negate either one of the 333 flurry. Or decrease all the three flurry to 222 instead.
Il leave you to decide what is easier and has bigger potential to protect you against overall damage, and consider the gain in a 1vsX fight where X is the ammount of enemies you fight. What do you think will net you the highest protection.

MercenaryK.4180:

Aegis will always block a single attack. That will never change.

Probably, and sadly that will result in a effect that will be wasted 50% of the time against less clever people, and wasted 95% of the time against average intellect people.

Well when i am at the front, that means i am at the front. Not behind them but at the front. What i could do is dodge backwards and use the skill assuming i don’t get caught by all the AoE fields that are getting placed on or behind the melee train.

And for the ammount it heal, that was never questioned. They do keep buffing it however, and it was good even before they did. Yet they keep buffing it, wonder why.

I do not know what type it blocks, what i do know is that when i use it. It reminds me of the new year firework from all the triggered effects shimmering on the dome.