Only aspect I see it having a moderate effect in is WvW. Every Guard and 5 other players will now have permanent swiftness. I don’t see Anet letting that happen, especially when we have speed runes.
Retreat + Pure of Voice + staff is already perma swiftness for 5, and all 3 are staples of the frontline guardian build anyway. I’m just making it slightly easier for the solo guard.
Support guard, played nowhere but 1 game mode. If aegis/20 is so much more broken than aegis/24, then reduce it to 25s for pve only.
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Many of those options do not also provide you and allies with aegis nor do they compliment a set of runes and except maybe speedy kits as it counts as weapon swap.
Also 66% uptime of +33% movement speed is akin to having +22% movement speed so you aren’t significantly slower than a class picking that 25% movement speed option. That’s without mentioning that generally those 25% movement speed options are complete pants for combat where aegis is great especially with how guardians can make use of aegis.
Pure of voice and retreat (one trait + skill) is near permenant swiftness, sure it isn’t 100% uptime but it’s pretty close to not matter too much.
What are you wanting this change for anyway? I’m guessing PvE as most people recognise a guard has exceptional staying power in fights as well as teleports which are worth far more than permanent swiftness. For PvE just take the trait or run some boon duration, anywhere that matters you will be with a party where everyone contributes to swiftness uptime.
Aegis is garbage, and it won’t change a thing if you give your allies aegis every 20 seconds instead of every 24.
A lot of the above options have other benefits, like not having to go in a totally useless line for pve, such as Honor. Some of these let you use great skills and weapons, and neither staff nor Retreat are great.
Anything below permanent +25% is too low. It’s what every class in the game gets, this is not even asking for buffs at this point, it’s a necessary change.
Guard has exceptional staying power in pve, that’s a good joke. Guard has 2 teleports that both require a target. If you are going from point A to point B, you don’t want to aggro mobs, so you can only use them by targeting something out of range. Meanwhile, mesmer can blink 3 times, and that’s a free-target teleport and warrior has 3 dashes between 2 weapons. I’m not even going to talk about DD.
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With pure of voice this one skill already grants nearly permenant swiftness and boon duration food makes it 100% uptime.
Alternatively 50% boon duration will get this to 100% uptime without any other source of swiftness or traiting.
Just using gnashblade food and a staff will give you 100% swiftness uptime (9s from staff, 23s from shout per 30s) but more importantly will give it to 5 other players.
There’s very few classes that can keep up 100% swiftness without investment, even warriors with a warhorn require traiting and some boon duration. Retreat feels in line with every other class and for its role (shouts being mainly support so you would be traiting support and most likely the trait) it is really good.
I only know 2 classes capable of permanent swiftness without much investment one being daredevil and the other being herald.
All classes, except guardian, can have +25% speed with only 1 utility skill or 1 trait. Guardian doesn’t have access to a +25% speed increase modifier at all.
Perma-swiftness is a lot more common than you think. In fact, all classes can have perma-swiftness (again, except Guardian) using 2 or less skills/traits.
Daredevil, Herald and Engineer all have permanent swiftness with one trait/skill, while Druid has a trait that grants +33% speed, which is the same as swiftness. And base Rev got another way of maintaining perma swiftness.
Elementalist has perma-swiftness with Glyph of Elemental Harmony (air attune) + the Glyph trait. Necromancer does the same with Spectral Walk + the Spectral trait. Mesmer does it with Signet of Inspiration + focus’ Temporal Curtain. Warrior makes a slightly bigger investment, using the Signet of Rage elite + warhorn’s Charge.
Besides the generic gearing options, guardian can maintain swiftness by having 3 things, Retreat, Pure of Voice and the staff. My change reduces that to 2, so you don’t have to dedicate your build into going faster.
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Just reduce the cooldown of Retreat to 25 seconds. That’s all it takes, and guardian can now have perma swiftness with Retreat + Staff, or Retreat + Pure of Voice.
Funny thing is that OP’s suggestion would actually be a mesmer buff.
https://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Well_of_PrecognitionThat well needs to just get removed from the game. There is no reason why Mesmers should do the Guardian boon better than the Guardian.
Mesmers are better guardians in general
Sounds like you have trouble with your reading comprehension. But your responses amuse me, so I’ll bite.
If you remove axe from the equation, guardians are already forced to play one way if you are going condi. You are using the weapon with the most hits per second.
All classes have dedicated condi weapons, it’s not a novel concept. If anything, firebrand is lucky to have the VoJ passive that lets every weapon do burning, and will probably have a condi tome in F1, so that regardless of weapon, they will always be some condi pressure.
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Funny thing is that OP’s suggestion would actually be a mesmer buff.
https://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Well_of_Precognition
To anyone that mains guardian, it’s blatantly obvious why torch won’t be a must-use weapon even if axe is purely condi.
Wow. Talk about serious cherry picking and forgetfulness. Your perception is clearly your reality. I am in serious doubt you even play Guardian by the way you reply.
Explain to me how shield or even focus, after you even stated that “torch is already mandatory for power builds,” and yet moments later have the gull to even deny that torch will be a must use for a condition based build since it’s the only offhand weapon that applies any condition, will see any use in PvE if this elite specialization will be a condition based specialization?
I said torch is mandatory for DPS builds. You seem to forget that torch is a pretty good power weapon, too, and does more damage than shield and focus even on power stats. Yet, shield and focus are seeing use.
And that’s because shield is used for cc and projectile hate, not damage. Focus has good damage, too, but more importantly it offers some survivability at the same time.
So, the two weapons will be used for the same reasons regardless of what axe does, in the same modes they are used now. Also, firebrands are not forced to use axe to begin with.
To anyone that mains guardian, it’s blatantly obvious why torch won’t be a must-use weapon even if axe is purely condi.
I didn’t make it clear, but I didn’t mean for the guardian to get aegis, only the other allies in range. And it’s just meant to be a bonus against aoe attacks, not the main draw of the ability.
Just making it a 0.5sec block is more than enough. Then we can have a trait that increases its duration to 0.75 sec or makes you reflect projectiles while you are blocking with aegis.
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We all agree the staff doesn’t live up to expectation as a support weapon. Now arguing whether you can have skillful autoattacks in a tab-targetting game or how unique each mechanic is, it looks a bit pointless to me.
The point we need to get across is that staff and mace could use a rework and leave it at that.
The reason staff is not used in pvp is because it offers no survivability or mobility, and it doesn’t have burst to make up for it either. Technically, the heals are supposed to be that survivability, but they are way undertuned and on a big cooldown.
If they actually gave Wave of Wrath a substantial healing value because it can’t self-heal, I wouldn’t mind either way, but I still think something like Light of Judgment would be better.
That’s what I’m balancing it around, it will be a purely selfless heal. And you are underestimating Water Blast. The radius is not exactly tiny, and more importantly, you can heal from 1200 range.
I hate to break it to you, but that’s already the case. The class has no condition weapon, and the axe is that weapon.
What do you mean by that? That axe will be our only condi weapon and it will be behind a paywall (ignoring torch)?
I complained about the condi situation enough already, especially because they refuse to give us the pvp version of VoJ, which would help the base condi build a lot. Still, a condi weapon would be a new addition to the class, which is what elite specs do.
But a new support weapon would not be a new addition, when we have 2 support weapons already and they can buff those.
How is the AA holding staff back, though? That implies it’s either too good or too abusable, and I don’t think the lootstick is either of those.
It’s not even unique, flamethrower has the same utility, and it’s still has multiple useful aspects.
Even if F2 is like Tome of Courage, it’s gated by some kind of resource, so it would be nice to have something to fall back on healing-wise, like Axe is apparently the same for a condi build even though F1 alone is quite a lot of condi pressure, before considering what the actual tome portion of it does.
While I agree the auto attack needs something more (and the shape is ideal to have it be an ally heal), that alone is not enough. #2 has too long of a cd for what it does, and Empower’s usefulness is questionable when blasting fire fields is so accesible. It could at least last as long as blasting a fire field, not half that.
Where did you hear that about the axe? I suppose it all depends on how frequently tomes can be used.
If F2 is just a cleanse bot or something, that’ll be extremely disappointing.I don’t really disagree; it really would be quite nice to have a proper non-tome healing weapon. Honestly, if I had it my way, I’d completely rework the staff. The boring WvW farming/swiftness bot aspect of it really holds it back.
- Wave of Farming should get trashed and replaced with a properly balanced version of https://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Light_of_Judgment.
- Orb of Light’s cooldown is too high.
- Symbol of Swiftness applying swiftness is particularly boring and not that useful. Superspeed with a shorter duration would be much more interesting.
- Empower’s range should be increased to at least 900, or it should be able to be cast while moving.
- Line of Warding is fine.I wouldn’t mind the staff’s current messy design if the new spec got a real support weapon, but since they thought that condition cancer was more important, they should really change some stuff on the staff.
A single-target/dual-target heal I can’t control? I’d rather keep the lootstick.
Keeping the AA as is mechanically is completely fine, just add a heal component to it. The animation is slow, the damage is low, what is worrysome about it? Ele’s water AA heals in an AoE around the impact (and you can cast it on your feet to heal around you) on top of other potent healing skills the staff carries.
Making axe a support weapon would just make me quit the class because it would show they have no intention of fixing the class’ problems. We have 2 underperforming support weapons, they can buff those instead of releasing a third behind a paywall.
I hope the “initiative” bar has nothing to do with the tomes. I am not completely sold on the idea of axe being a condition weapon or Firebrand/Purifier as a condition based specialization for Guardian yet, as it would completely render shield and focus as useless and force us to use torch in our offhand (which is arguably our most poorly designed weapon IMO). But to kind of compromise between power and condition, here is my idea:
I would like to see the initiative bar act in reverse as it does for thief. For example, a successful auto attack (number 1) would generate one initiative. Once you generate the six or so initiative your number 2 and 3 attack would also afflict torment onto the target (the stacks should be at fairly substantial, maybe one stack per initiative). Once this occurs, your initiative bar is reset and your chain starts over. I think this would offer good synergy with other traitlines, namely Zeal/Radiance for the passive burning applications based off symbols, while maintaining some power damage.
Axe autoattack would be three chains, first chain single hit, second chain two hits, third chain would one hit and our symbol that pulses quickness to five targets. Melee range.
Axe 2-3 would operate as 900 range. Preferably offering some sort of piercing or cc to help Guardians in that departmentI would like for it to not be only a power or condition based specialization, but able to do either effectively
There’s exactly 0 chance the initiative bar is tied to the axe, they have never tied a new profession mechanic to the new weapon.
I have no doubt axe is condi, all our weapons are pure power, how could it be anything else? As for the off-hand, focus and shield are not used for damage anyway, but for their utility, and will continue to be used for the same reason. Torch is already mandatory for power DPS builds.
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Point being, I’d be more sympathetic to guardians if they just straight up said they are lazy and want a passive 25%.
As if your sympathy means anything.
It’s not like guard has a way of getting perma-swiftness / 25% but people don’t like it because it’s too active. All choices involve specific gear (runes/sigils), or specific builds (staff + Pure of Voice + Retreat). So, you can’t play the build you want and change one trait or one skill to do it, like every single class in the game can. Streamlined Kits is very much an accessible way of doing things that is not totally passive but doesn’t require you to build around it.
But all that’s highly advanced for you that just wants to beat others over their head to act superior.
Scrapper’s mechanic in pve is useful at getting prestige points when you are doing Tarnished Traitor under octovine. All other players get [F] Revive, while you can be at range and stomp as soon as he goes down.
And that’s pretty much it. If it teleported the ally to you, it would be a lot more useful.
If they’d made downed state more common in PvE, it’d probably be a lot more popular.
I’d agree if teammate targeting wasn’t so wonky. Currently you can res them faster by yourself than send f-gyro to do it.
Or you can do both and rez them at double speed.
There are so few mechanics that blocks/aegis work on, it’s depressing.
Anyway, your idea is a good one.
Here’s my take on it:
Protector’s Strike last 2 1/2 seconds
Blocks all attacks on you for the duration, and pulses aegis to allies in range when you block an attack (1sec internal cd)
And it works like DD’s Bandit’s Defense, if you block an attack, you unlock the flip skill that damages all enemies around and grants protection.
It doesn’t need to look bad either, though.
Even if F2 is like Tome of Courage, it’s gated by some kind of resource, so it would be nice to have something to fall back on healing-wise, like Axe is apparently the same for a condi build even though F1 alone is quite a lot of condi pressure, before considering what the actual tome portion of it does.
While I agree the auto attack needs something more (and the shape is ideal to have it be an ally heal), that alone is not enough. #2 has too long of a cd for what it does, and Empower’s usefulness is questionable when blasting fire fields is so accesible. It could at least last as long as blasting a fire field, not half that.
Viable is a relative thing, because we are not talking about a single boss and not every group goes for a speed run.
The thing is, though, the only reason to take guardian as it is, is because you can’t be bothered to wait for another class. It’s not like there’s any shortage of dps players, and guardian is not the optimal choice. So, while you will find groups to play with, even on lfg, and fractals are a lot more casual, that doesn’t mean for one second that guardian is not underperforming.
And they are underperforming with a power dps spec, which is the biggest crime here. We got shafted hard with HoT, we practically didn’t get an elite spec. The bow was nerfed to uselessness even for the game modes it was used in, because it was barely ever used in pve to begin with. And with our elite spec, we can’t compete with the dps of base classes, classes that got great elite specs on top of it.
How is guardian not bad compared to ranger that does more dps than DH as base and has an amazing support spec? How is DH not bad compared to Tempest that is supposed to be a support spec and is the best healer in the game, but also does the most dps in both power and condi?
Saying that guardian can still get in groups doesn’t make it better. The class has problems and needs dev attention. But when other classes were getting new skills and traits, we got signet buffs among an ocean of nerfs.
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Even if F2 is healing, I wonder if Firebrand can play as a healer. We sure don’t have anything close to Druid’s staff or Ele’s Staff in Water attun.
I wish they buffed our staff. It doesn’t need a huge amount of changes, just up the healing numbers, add some healing to #1, put a blast finisher on #2 (and maybe #4), increase the might duration on #4, reduce #5’s cd by 10 seconds like it is on pvp, maybe add projectile destruction on #5, but that’s pushing it.
It’s not about underperforming. A perfectly-played guardian can’t outdps a perfectly played Tempest, and condi tempest is extremely easy to play.
No class is truly terrible that you regret levelling it, playing it or even maining it.
The complaints come solely from comparisons with other classes and what each class can provide in the meta. So, while guardian needs a lot of help in several areas, you still have a fine time playing the game as the class.
And keep in mind that the usually people that complain about guardian still remain guard mains.
No, lfg is not the problem. Nobody owes you a favour to carry you. Of course you can get in a guild and weight them down, but that doesn’t mean the class needs to remain in a terrible state.
Aegis stacking up to 3 is one of the ideas I’m working with for an elite spec I’m concepting. The profession mechanic changes virtues to Ele-like Attunements, so you can only have 1 virtue active at the time, but you get better passive effects. For Courage, the passive effect is that you can have up to 3 stacks of aegis.
we just need a dps buff and be less selfish and we will be ok
As a dps spot.
Because if guardian is to perform in any other role, we need heavy buffs and/or a broken elite spec.
Our signature boons already clash with each other (you don’t do retaliation damage if you block an attack). Just another brilliantly designed aspect of guardian.
Hrrrmn. I’m not sure about making the scaling of the active equal to Wings of Resolve. Wings of Resolve does have downsides.
Wings of Resolve base healing is already 240% higher than VoR, ignoring the scaling. Being instant doesn’t excuse such low numbers.
Just making the scaling equal is more than fair. Even if you have 1800 healing power, that’s only 800 more healing than before.
Exactly what Lahmia said. Absolute Resolution is great even when you are using your virtues selfishly. And it goes great with Indomitable Courage for that reason.
Having to choose between either of those 2 would be bad. So, unless Battle Presense is merged to the master trait slot, leave them as is and buff both.
Honestly, just make the passive increase of Absolute Resolution baseline, and change the traits to this:
- Absolute Resolution: Activating Virtue of Resolve removes conditions from nearby allies. Nearby allies gain Virtue of Resolve’s passive effect.
-Battle Presense: Maintain the passive effect of your virtues when you activate them. Activating a virtue increases the duration of boons currently on you by 2 seconds.
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Everything is viable. Raid bosses have been cleared with masterwork gear or with 3 people. Nobody claims there’s something that absolutely doesn’t work. Just that it’s not optimal.
What can we give? Stability? Dragonhunter is an entirely selfish spec focused on dps. The meta wants dps. It just so happens that in the end, we are not good at it.
It’s not the testers fault that the number look like this. Nobody suggests a group is dooming themselves by accepting a guardian. But when people are already playing multiple classes, and dps is the most popular role, you will find offers from tempests, condi rangers/engis/thieves along with that guardian. Why would you not take the best offer?
And yet, guardian has double the number of builds as revenant on metabattle, and is more readily accepted into groups from what I’ve seen. I’m not saying we are doing great, but to say that we are worse off than revenant? That’s just crazy talk.
Given that this is a pve-focused thread, I don’t see how conquest builds make a difference. And a lot of them are duplicates.
For pve, guardian has 1 build and that build was already falling behind prior to the patch, but with the condi craze, we are 5-6 builds behind. And it’s not like guardian had it good at any time since HoT’s launch. We were always average, when Revenant was meta. Revenant fell off the meta for 2 balance patches and it became a meme, ignoring the garbage heap guardian was burried under for an entire year.
Past comparisons aside, revenant is becoming viable in groups again with their condi build, they have Deimos fight where they are a standard pick, and they have the off-meta Ventari build. Meanwhile guardian remains in their decent-but-Ele-is-better place for 2 years straight. We had a situational edge due to more CC, but that was nerfed.
Yes.
Will it be that much better for pvp, though? The reduced cd is minimal, but is the 3rd change so impactful? Are you going to build condi and fight mid to share the burning? You can already do that with Thief and Ele anyway.
But I’m focusing on pve primarily, where VoJ is not good enough to build around and it might as well not be there if you are power, VoR is cheap condi removal and a weak secondary heal and VoC is only there to ruin screenshots and fuel Chocolate Omnomberry Cream.
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No, it’s called Guardian now has a condi build like every other class in the game.
They are pretty underwhelming for being a profession mechanic.
Virtue of Justice
reduce cd to 16 seconds
Unsplit the pve and pvp versions
When you use the active, the burn damage should scale with your own condi damage like Thief’s venoms, not the ally’s.
Virtue of Resolve
The scaling on the passive is rubbish, it’s half that of regeneration. It should be at least double. Make the scaling of the active equal to Wings of Resolve
Battle Presence (sharing VoR with allies) should be baseline.
-Battle Presence (new): You retain the passive effect of Virtue of Resolve when you activate it
EDIT: There’s the issue that if all guardians shared VoR, it could overwrite the application of those that build for healing power. I’m not sure if the game compares numbers, because for regen it only compares duration, not effectiveness. If that’s the case, then keep the sharing as part of Battle Presense, along with the new effect, because it’s too weak for a grandmaster trait currently.
Virtue of Courage
Passive aegis should recharge every 30 seconds baseline, 20 seconds with Indomitable Courage.
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I can’t tell if the elite is a chain that breaks or that is on fire. Maybe it’s something similar to Entangle with burning instead of bleed?
I think Axe auto will hit in a cone in front of you, similar to Ele’s Lightning Whip, so not quite melee range, but still pretty short.
I don’t think Tomes being long ranged is any indicator, quite the opposite really as you will always have access to a 1200 range “weapon”, so Axe itself doesn’t have to be ranged. And we have DH with a longbow and melee traps, so..
That been said, there’s a trait that shows a throwing axe, so that’s a clue, or the trait could grant extra range.
When are they going to change this awful trait. Not only do we have to get a major trait for it (all other boon duration traits for other base classes are minors), it’s the only one that doesn’t always work, requiring a staff equipped. So much for being the boon profession.
As it is I don’t use them and almost never see anyone else using them in solo content. A 20 sec cooldown means you can’t use them every fight and they’re just not worth the effort.
People use personal DPS skills over group buffing abilities in solo content? Shocker.
What even is solo content? Doing the story? Or open world? Like you need a specific build to do either one of those.
In everything else pve, dungeons, fractals, raids, spirits are heavily used.
How do they recharge if they work like that though? Like, if the bar is always full when you open a time, what’s there to stop you from going through all the tomes spamming skills?
Those are just ridiculous claims. The fact that druid have some healing on most of their skill set doesn’t make them a healer, it only shows that base ranger didn’t have enough ally healing and druid overcompensates.
Druid is not even good at healing. This was just all marketing. It’s funny that nobody even thinks of calling Tempest a healer when the amount of healing they can do puts druid to shame. Tempest is the true healer in the game because that’s all they can do as support, except maybe some protection. But it wasn’t marketed as such so people ignore that fact.
Druid on the other hand has invaluable buffs and rather limited healing for being the “healing” spec, and even that is gated behind a resource bar.
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Shield is fine, at best it could use some cd trimming (like #4 20s, #5 25s). The only problem with shield is how bad mh pistol is, but now we are getting a second option.
As for med kit, med blast is extremely undertuned. The ally needs 7 boons before Med Blast can match an Ele’s Water Blast base healing, and that’s ignoring the significantly lower coefficient and higher cast time.
Med Kit replaces our heal skill, it shouldn’t? be this bad. Water Blast is 1 skill out of 20 and Ele can still use Wash the Pain and has access to more healing in general.
I think the bar is empty, and it starts filling over time (like initiative, since they have the same look) when you equip a tome. Maybe it works like that so you don’t use the best spell from each tome and drop it, but you have to camp it a bit before you have enough initiative to use the higher-cost spells.
Then maybe each tome uses a different initiative bar, colour-coded like Fashion Mage said, so that you have to build each individually and your progress is saved when you drop the tome, and that’s what the bars in the icons could mean: how much initiative you have stored for each tome.
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I don’t think our resource will work like that because it’s extremely build-restrictive. Like, imagine if you want to play condi healer, your bar will be contantly getting filled with red diamonds potentially locking you out of F2.
But it’s true those coloured bars are there, so they must mean something. In the screenshot, the initiative bar is empty, so maybe the diamonds don’t start filling up until you are holding a tome.
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I like your idea of crit healing, it makes sense with Seraph’s +precision being one of the higher stats when it’s a condi/support stat combo.
I’ve thrown enough salt already, so I will try to be constructive here.
I agree that Firebrand will be tied to Logan. Braham has already become Dragonhunter, and books are really not his style. Logan is a natural leader and after the Blighting Pod he doesn’t seem to be in a potition to fight, so he can take a supportive role. And of course, he’s now the leader of the Pact. Not to mention the Seraph stat combo.
Now, let’s hope the spec offers more than just quickness.
That would be true if pvp was only kits and gyros. Elixirs and Rocket Boots are seeing use, too. And that just proves my point that kits can be replaced by single skills. If kits would serve a purpose in the build, they would be picked, there’s no “you don’t need more kits”. It just means that the don’t add something to the build that is more valuable than the utility you will miss.
Cleaving was just a weird thing for engi because our weapons didn’t have it, while all other classes have multiple weapons that do. Main-hand sword will have cleave, too, so there’s no need to take a kit for it.
And this is pvp anyway, the talk was about pve.