Guild Wars 2

@ Bravery, Lastly on the subject of passive gameplay.

While it’s commendable your looking at spirit weapons it won’t do much good as in the end they really need a complete overhaul in their identity.

I say this for 2 reasons

1: Spirit weapons have a large downtime due to how easy they can die, the fact their Cd starts after they die and they only last so long even if left alone.
&
2: Using a spirit weapon means you sacrifice much if not all your ability to sustain your own health, cleanse conditions, provide boon support or provide CC.

Even if both of these problems were more or less solved via new versions of traits, adjusting when CD’s happen and how long spirit weapons last the guardian would essentially become either the new version of the MM necro or the poor mans version of it.
Both outcomes would be bad from a gameplay perspective (encourages you to let AI do all the work) & a balance perspective.

It would be better to redesign them completely.
Personally many people I know would like it if the designers took a look at the dervish weapon enchants and redesigned spirit weapons to a similar degree. (short term short CD effects for the guardian & possibly nearby allies that last a set number of hits & or seconds that can provide things like projectile defense, healing on attack condition removal, CC etc…)

Saiyan.1704:

Right Hand Strength
I don’t think nerfing a trait, then adding an additional effect to seclude other weapons just to make Sword look good, is the right approach here. Also, Sword is more defined by its initial burst effect instead of a Finishing Move burst effect, your suggested health threshold of 25% burn proc isn’t exactly what Sword is all about.

Considering the Inner Fire trait you suggested getting buffed to a 2 burn stack threshold, the 20% fury is basically going to be up 100%. This completely dominates Right-Hand Strength, making it underwhelming

• I recommend Inner Fire stays the same at a 3 stack thresholds.
• Right-Hand Strength stays the same at 15% crit chance.
• Add Sword damage modifier of 5% instead of a 20% weapon cd.

This will give Sword its “Burst” effect while also allowing people to choose exactly what trait they prefer based on their weapon selections, as usual.

Perfect Inscriptions
My suggestion on Wrath of Justice already activates a signet on the utility bar, I recommend to just change Perfect Inscription’s Retal Aura to Fire Shield Aura instead and keep the rest of the trait values as is.

Why fire shield:

• Fire Shield complements Altruistic Healing builds with its Might stacking, essentially promoting Sage Amulet considering Sage is already a subpar amulet for Guardian at the moment.

• Gives the Guardian additional Might stacking abilities considering we removed Might stacking on Zealous Scepter’s trait change.

• Gives additional burn procs, of which, is mostly effective 1v1 as team pvp still has too much aoe condi cleanses going around, complementing Signet’s single target utility effects.

• Promotes build diversity for players who wants Rune of Fire and GS#4 Leap in Purging Flames. Players will like the new Fire Shield trait change.

Radiant Retaliation
The trait needs to increase Retaliation damages by 25% but ONLY for the Guardian. It does not apply for allies who receives Retal from the Guardian. However, Spirit Weapons can (should) also receive this bonus effect. Approx Retal damage would be around 312, about the level of Engi’s retal damages with his perma might stacks.

Agree with pretty much everything you said except for a couple things

1: Right handed Strength. The sword already does pretty decent single target damage & if the 3rd AA had some reliable cleave then it would be a great melee damage weapon.
Radiance is mainly about 2 things, Critical hits and condition damage. Seeing as inner fire has the critical hits part covered pretty well wouldn’t adding a condition onto sword crits (say a 4 second bleed) be better ?
I mean assuming you don’t even have + condition damage it can still be a decent little boost when fully might stacked.

2: Fire Aura, Could be interesting. personally though I would say 3 stacks of might for 15 seconds for nearby allies & a single condition cleanse for yourself.
(this would work with altruistic healing and provide a bit of condition clear which signet builds lack)

3: Radiant Retaliation. Anything that boosts retaliation damage encourages passive play which is bad both from a gameplay perspective and a balance perspective.

@ bravery

Before you reduce the effectiveness of guardian traits it may be more beneficial time wise to start with other classes.

I say this because guardians tend to not multi task as well as several other classes, thus any reductions on the guardians end would require much larger reductions where Rev’s, engineers & elementalists are concerned.

Most of my other critiques still stand regarding traits & virtues.

As for weapon skills/utilities

1: Hammer AA. Because this is so slow most guardians only use hammer when they have to. (by reducing the cast time & removing the after cast then reducing the number of pulses on the symbol to 1 you can maintain the same protection uptime & damage output)

2: Zealot’s Embrace. A shadow step doesn’t really feel like its guardian-ish. (Simply increasing the speed of the wave and reducing the cast time would be enough as it’s currently very slow)

3: Staff Piercing Light. (this would be far to powerful. Instead why not just get rid of the detonate on orb of light, increase the speed/hitbox size then increase the healing output.)

4: True Shot, true the damage could be a it on the high end given the cool down, however reducing the damage means a big drop in longbow damage output overall.
(instead why not reduce the damage by say 20%, tack on a cripple, make it usable while moving then reduce the cast time of the AA to 1/2 second so the damage over time stays more or less the same)

5: Hunter’s Ward. This skill already took a very long time to cast for any environment with high pressure (PVP and Raids) Either leave it as is in game or change it to be a wave attack that immobilizes and burns foes with a lower Cd then is now since it would have a lower area of effect.

6: Orb of Wrath. This skill already had problems connecting with targets beyond 600 range, making it summon 7 orbs one at a time before they can fire will just cause more problems (however creative it is) Change it to a channeled beam _(ala mes greatsword) with near instant connect, but reduce the damage by 15 or so % to offset the change.

7: Sword AA. (the only change the sword needed was on the 3rd AA, it got that but having an executioners effect on it is not needed, just make the AA hit reliably with a melee cleave)

8: The only change focus could have used was possibly a faster speed on the ray. (lasting “silence” effects would be impossible to balance as well)

9: Same ^ for Shield.

10: Having movement speed cancel effects is generally a bad thing (reduce the torch #5 to 4 pulses for 1 second, have the first and last effect the guardian is all it needs)

11: litany of Wrath is more or less fine as is.

12: Signet of Resolve (nice idea but generally protection is something you want up constantly or when you want it up not randomly. The second half is kind of convoluted)

13: Purification (the only thing it really needs is for the initial heal to be larger, the secondary heal to be smaller and the regeneration to be shared with allies)

14: Hollowed ground ( boon ripping doesn’t really fit the guardian and if it were to get it a consecration wouldn’t really make sense and they protect allies and cure stuff.)

15: Merciful Intervention (at this point since they both have long CD’s, teleport and are of limited use for multi tasking just merge it with Judge’s Intervention and call it “Intervention”. Then feel free to create something new.)

16: Smite condition is good as is unless you plan on greatly reducing access to conditions across the board.

17: Retreat. (to keep shouts up to par with other abilities why not lower the CD to 30 seconds base then lower the boon base uptime to 18 seconds base)

18: Save yourselves (really needs some resistance, its being nicknamed the suicide button by many people)

19: Hold the Line (could use a slight boost to stay in line with other skills. Either a cool down reduction to 30 seconds or a boon uptime increase)

20: Bane signet. (fine as is more or less, the knock down could be made into a wave like warrior offhand mace)

21: Signet of Judgment (why not just go with protection and retaliation for a short duration to help counter spikes)

22 etc… : Removing the boons from traps and adding arming times will effectively make guard bad vs many other classes which it already struggles to fill the same roll as. If done those classes would need even larger nerfs to maintain balance. (hence why I suggest you start with the more powerful classes and work your way down so that the changes later on won’t have to be so much)

http://gw2skills.net/editor/?vVAQRArd8elsAhqhY3QwVIwPEHNE1dY3yAAPBRQXmnv7L/A-TZBFwAAeAAEOIAtPCA62fQwJAAA with mender amulet _(note that mender amulet doesn’t have the correct healing power on gw2skills.net)

You will get 1100+ aoe dodge heals &1100+ AEGIS heals with about +20% for allies.

The build shines best a contesting a point indefinitely but if coordinated with allies can provide some healing & burst.

traveler, lyssa, soldier, scrapper, leadership & pack runes can work as well.

If you want a bit higher personal dps at the cost of personal survivability & ally heals you can go paladin amulet.

Note this build works much better with DH due to extra protection, stun break, AOE and bow being more reliable then scepter.

TheBravery.9615:

Zantmar.5406:

TheBravery.9615:

Their virtues are fun to use than instant cast effect of the original virtues.

something should be done about the original virtues then

currently the game screams the fact that elite specs are better than the origional pvp or pve
i mean:
necro- base necro was a joke, still is, and hopefully not be forever
mesmer- have fun running travler runes
guardian- base virtues? pleaz drink red bull and grow sum wings
ranger- good day Mr. Smoke Scale, i see that you and your pet tyrian is doing well
revenant- i was gonna buy travler runes for him and then swiftness showed up
warrior- particle effects, nuff said
engineer- wow i have “unlocked” melee

I’d think there’s more to it than that.

There was a discussion about this path earlier in this thread
https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/professions/guardian/Suggestion-CDI-Guardian-Balance/6017078/

Look at the attached image, and tell me, which option do you think is the best to deal with intraprofessional imbalance?

You need to look at the class’s base abilities and how they scale with stats before traits before you reduce how well traits work however.

Some traits are rather strong for a reason, that being if they weren’t the class would never be able to compete due to lower base effects and scaling.

Having strong traits but lower base scaling also creates some choice, you could be really strong at something (DPS, CC, Healing/support) but doing so would mean your less so at others.
(the guardian tends to make allot more sacrifice here then the Ele, engi or rev so before you nerf the guardian traits you may want to look at them so the decrease they need isn’t so severe)

@ Zantamar I actually have to differ with you on sword being a power weapon only.

Sure it is a power weapon at base but radiance is supposed to be the line that gives options for condition damage.

I dont agree with it getting an executioner’s style trait however. I think it should just do bleeding on critical hits.
This would provide a secondary damaging condition without needing a sigil.

As for the virtues and weapon skills.

1: Wings of Resolve, DH is currently extremely reliant on the healing this does & the mobility it gives. Reducing that & increasing the cool down would be very bad for them. This is especially true given the amount of CC out there that can interrupt this and put it on a full cool down.

2: Focus skills are actually quite nice as is, the only gripe I’ve ever heard is that ray of judgment is slow.

3: Shield is nice as is and doesn’t really need any changes. (a Channeled AOE block would also be a bit OP)

4: The only complaint that I have ever heard about the torch is that the number 5 doesn’t do anything for the guardian. otherwise its fine.

I look forward to seeing what you come up with for sword scepter, hammer & staff.

1: Agree on swapping them. Generally people are most often going to take the highest damage traits available, so having +damage traits as minors frees up the majors for choice.

3: While regeneration is given out like candy it does play a large roll on how some classes work. If you plan on changing that then all I can say is good luck.

5: Guardian sustain traits are mainly located in valor, honor & virtues because those are the lines that have to do with healing, removing conditions & helpful utility effects.
The other lines have to do with pure damage, critical strikes & condition damage.

13: The condition removal on strength of the fallen is alright but the boost to downed state is where it becomes meh. Downed states are times when you should pretty much be dead unless you have an ally to help you and if you playing well should not be happening all that often.
Perhaps it could do something when you get downed. Or grant you + effects when nearby a downed ally, or allies effects when your downed.

14: As I said above the sustain traits are in valor, honor and virtues because that’s what those lines are about. Valor already boosts meditations & has altruistic healing. Having it give the added choice of those or sustain from signet/consecration use would vary up PvP quite a bit.

15: Invigorating Mace, tough to say what would be balanced but we do know more regeneration wouldn’t really be of use. Protection, AEGIS, or weakness on proc could all work depending how they are balanced.

16: Even with duration reduced to 1 second you would still be able to keep up a stack of stability permanently on yourself and nearby allies.
Personally I’d say move empowering might here, guardian could never put up as many might stacks as a warrior but at least they would be able to help some.

If they would do the following to hammer I and many others would gladly use it.

1: Reduce the cast time of the last AA to 1/2 second and get rid of the after cast, but take 1 pulse off of symbol of protection. (this would effectively keep the damage and protection uptime the same while making the AA much faster)

2: Reduce the cast time of the number 3 & 4, as is their way too slow.

3: Make it so you can move while casting the Number 5.

Until then its just something you have to bring while your bored to death spamming 1.

TheBravery.9615:

https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1_Z1buZnVy1JQ9JLfXwfUOPQ2b96XhXd6Yl0w1ITorX0/edit?usp=sharing

Still work in progress, but foundation of traits are completed. Let me know what you guys think.

Few critiques

1: Fiery wrath should be a minor. Even with the changes the only time I cannot see myself or most ppl using it is if they want to camp the scepter which very few ppl like using now.

2: Zealot’s Speed. Feels like it should be in the honor line.

3: Wrathful Spirit. The added regeneration is nice but regeneration is basically given out like candy these days.

4: Expeditious Spirit. Without a true overhaul of spirit weapons I doubt how much good overhauling their traits will really do.

5: Pure of Heart is really fine as is, merging it with shattered AEGIS seems weird as zeal is supposed to be the offensive line. (Perhaps shattered AEGIS could have a secondary offensive effect)

6: Symbolic Avenger, having a ring of warding on this could become very OP if using a hammer or mace.
(If it caused symbols to cripple with each pulse it would help to do the desired effect but in a balanced way.)

7: Healer’s retribution. Instead of doing smite condition perhaps it could grant AOE Retaliation when you use a heal

8: Right Handed Strength. The low health threshold feels like a warrior and necro thing, guardians aren’t executioners. (if it did say 4 seconds of bleeding on critical hits then it would be quite nice)

9: Wrath of justice is actually quite nice and helps guardians get & stay in close when needed.

10: Perfect Inscriptions, this trait was nice a couple of years ago when it was several different traits. (if it granted 3 stacks of AOE might for 10 seconds and cleansed a condition on signet use it would be quite nice)

11: Radiant Resistance, would be much better if it was brought back as http://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Searing_Flames with a twist, like perhaps an AOE flame blast & CD based per target.

12: Protectors Impact. , Smiters boon is actually nice in this spot, we should also be focusing on getting rid of fall traits as they are nearly never used.

13: Strength of the Fallen, Again should be focusing on getting rid of when downed traits.

14: AEGIS master, seems nice but I doubt anyone will ever want to use it vs other choices. (What we really need is a 3rd sustain trait to compete with the other 2. Perhaps one that heals on signet use or consecration use)

15: Invigorating Mace, Mace already has allot of regeneration. The proc would effectively not do anything.

16: Resonating Symbols, would effectively give guardians & nearby allies permanent stability with a hammer or mace thus being very OP.

17: Empowering Might is kinda meh, The thing it really needs is a longer might duration not replacement.

18: Resolve of the Abandoned, This trait would only ever really be good for solo play.
(pure of voice is also very nice where it’s currently at in honor)

19: Unscathed Contender. Really this trait just needed to be changed so that it granted a damage boost when your above a set health %.

Only way I would ever consider using a DH as my 5th over a druid is if the DH were using menders with this build

http://gw2skills.net/editor/?vVAQJgeTn8cCVDhdDBWdC8DhlGiSe4T+n/aY3yAAbCiguE-TZBFABAcEA6vMQbnAABOEA6s/AA

Its extremely hard to kill, has a ton of self healing and condi cleanse, can put out some decent healing to allies & can swap to bow to easily get 5k crits with true shot.

Sadly however the Ele can still do all that it does better.

Exedore.6320:

Gatvin.6510:

I’d honestly rather see most non-elite builds brought up to par with elite specs, rather than nerfing the Elites. Most of them have rather cool internal synergies and fun combat flow.

Please, no.

Elite specs have ruined PvP because they can do almost everything (no clear weakness, many strengths) and because many are so faceroll easy to play.

That is really limited to a few 3-4 specs.

IDK if I would want all core stuff brought up to elite level but you can’t deny that a fair number of core trait lines (especially on guardian) have major problems.

Id rather they rework signets & their traits.

Signet of Wrath would be great if they passive granted +25% run speed and the active granted 3 second Immob + 4 stacks of bleed for 5 seconds.

Combined with a decent signet trait rework it could make having a signet or 2 on your bar a real choice.

TheBravery.9615:

Does anyone want to share criticism about the current weapon skills in game?

I know orb of light is an unreliable and gimmicky attack, longbow skills need readjusting, hammer’s ring of warding needs a usability buff…

Does anyone like or use ray of judgement? (focus) or shield of judgement? (shield)

I did above.

As for ray of judgment, it could honestly just use a slight speed buff to how fast it moves.

Other then that I think I mentioned all the gripes people have with weapons.

ronpierce.2760:

Ragnar the Rock.3174:

ronpierce.2760:

Let me explain real fast why this happens. It is not technically a bug. WoR is a mobility skill. As such, when interrupted all mobility skills go on full cooldown to avoid cancel-exploiting mobility. With Shield of Courage, it is a CC break when traited (the base acting like the traited version is either lazy or a bug). All CC breaks go on full cooldown when interrupted.

As such, SoC needs to just be instant since it is already 1/4 cast anyways. This would fix a lot of the unnecessary issues. Alternatively, fix the base version and make only the traited version instant.

Wings of Resolve is a bit different. How it could be fixed is having the heal and condition removal (if traited) happen on use, which would be a HUGE boon to the skill, and not require an evade.

Also, another bug to be aware of: WoR does not remove immobilize apllied by roots (runes of the grove/ ancient seeds/ Entangle).

If they were to lower the base heal of wings slightly then give it an evade it would be fine. As is it already heals for quite a bit and has excellent scaling.

Your completely right on courage.

It would also be very very very nice if they would update and do some work on core guardian virtues while their at it as they are complete crap compared to DH ones.

I feel like there was a misunderstanding. I didn’t want to change the heal on Wings. The only thing is that the heal and removal could be at the beginning of the cast. This would be good for the skill for several reasons. First, it wouldn’t really need an evade, and I’m not sure an evade is totally justified. It’s a good skill already. But if the heal and removal was at the front it wouldn’t punish you for wanting to leap further rather than closer in terms of needing to remove conditions immediately (such as Torment, which currently, wings of resolve causes you to take more torment damage before it removes the condition).

Then, if interrupted, it’s okay because it already did the major effects.

If the heal were at the start though the leap would be kind of useless for helping allies.

For christ’s sake Anet stop stacking warriors and thieves on my team.

Last several matches I have had 3-4 of 5 slots filled with them and it does nothing but guarantee a loss.

ronpierce.2760:

Let me explain real fast why this happens. It is not technically a bug. WoR is a mobility skill. As such, when interrupted all mobility skills go on full cooldown to avoid cancel-exploiting mobility. With Shield of Courage, it is a CC break when traited (the base acting like the traited version is either lazy or a bug). All CC breaks go on full cooldown when interrupted.

As such, SoC needs to just be instant since it is already 1/4 cast anyways. This would fix a lot of the unnecessary issues. Alternatively, fix the base version and make only the traited version instant.

Wings of Resolve is a bit different. How it could be fixed is having the heal and condition removal (if traited) happen on use, which would be a HUGE boon to the skill, and not require an evade.

Also, another bug to be aware of: WoR does not remove immobilize apllied by roots (runes of the grove/ ancient seeds/ Entangle).

If they were to lower the base heal of wings slightly then give it an evade it would be fine. As is it already heals for quite a bit and has excellent scaling.

Your completely right on courage.

It would also be very very very nice if they would update and do some work on core guardian virtues while their at it as they are complete crap compared to DH ones.

TheBravery.9615:

https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1_Z1buZnVy1JQ9JLfXwfUOPQ2b96XhXd6Yl0w1ITorX0/edit?usp=sharing

Work in progress

Monks focus should be included along side altruistic healing on your paper.

If a guardian is not using one of those they are basically a dead guardian as the vast majority of their sustain comes from those 2 traits.

In an ideal world guardians would not have to specialize into valor or to a lesser extent virtues like they do now.

As for critiques.

1: Fiery Wrath. Should just become a minor. Look at the rev traits and you will see that many of their + damage traits are minors while majors have more to do with choice.

2: Wrathful Spirit. Its useless as retaliation as there are many other ways to apply retaliation & this source is so short in duration nobody will ever want it.

3: Healer’s retribution. should really be merged into retribution or be made into AN AOE retaliation.

4: Right Handed strength could be moved to the grand master slot in radiant retaliations spot if it were to apply bleeds (say 4 seconds) or burns (say 1 second) on critical hits with sword attacks.
(leave the low health stuff to warriors and necros as they fit the executioner theme better)

5: Wrath of Justice is quite good as is.

6: Perfect Inscriptions, would be much better if it removed conditions & or granted protection on signet use. That would lessen the need for traps & meditations (and their traits) greatly.

7: Instead of radiant retaliation geting a patch fix why not get rid of it and replace it with a buffed right handed strength.
As for what to replace right handed strength with, why not take a look at the old searing flames trait http://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Searing_Flames with a slight buff.

like the other ideas so far.

TheBravery.9615:

What are some of the complaints from other professions about the guardian in a PvP / WvW perspective?

I know people are suggesting that traps get nerfed further. Any comments?

Thats because of the flaw in trap design.

They are invisible to enemies & don’t share boons granted with allies.

Thus they must have high damage & or CC. Otherwise they are useless.

Which in turn causes QQ from low skill players because they cannot avoid them & laughter from high skill players as they avoid/block throgh them thus negating them entirely.

If they had made them wells they would be much better for all levels of skill because they would not be for ambushes but be ranged and share boons.

Cause nobody in their right mind wants to use staff and hasn’t for nearly 2 years.

Lastly for utility skills

1: Signet of Resolve, The cool down could stand to be lowered.

2: Bane Signet, Make it a cone knock down similar to warrior off hand mace.

3: Signet of Wrath. Scrap the + condition damage. Make it grant +25% run speed instead.

4: Signet of Courage, Reduce the time between passive heals to 3 seconds then reduce the healing done to 33% of what it is now.

Change the active to grant stability and resistance (2 stacks for 8 seconds, 8 seconds respectively) with a 3/4 second cast time and 50ish second cool down.

5: Hold the Line, bump the protection up to 6 seconds and regeneration up to 8 seconds.

6: Save Yourselves, make soldier/trooper rune and pure of voice apply before the shout effect.

7: Retreat, reduce the cool down to 30 seconds base.

8: Sanctuary & Hollowed Ground. Just redesign them.

9: Spirit weapons. They are far to easy to kill in PvP & WvW & require a huge sacrifice in sustain for use. Whats more most guardians dont want that buffed because it would still end up with guardians becoming a bad MM necro knock off.
(if they were redesigned to have the theme the weapon enhancement spells that the dervish had in GW1 but effect the party then they would be awesome)

As for traits

1: Zeal minors should be shuffled with majors & merged into the majors in several cases.
(minors should cover things the entire class has access to, majors should be about choosing to specialize something, as is they do the opposite and there is no real choices.)

2: Wrathful Spirit is crap, should be changed to grant might stacks for 10s.
(the zeal line as a whole needs allot of work)

3: Healer’s Retribution should grant retal to all nearby allies.

4: Perfect Inscriptions should remove a condition from nearby allies & grant might (2 stacks for 10 seconds) to nearby allies then have the passive buff.
_(the changes it got the last year or so are bad)

5: Radiant Retaliation, just get rid of it and create something new.

6: Strength of the Fallen, get rid of the downed effects, change the name and give it a secondary effect.

7: Stalwart Defender, get rid of the toughness. make it taunt enemies that shield number 4 strikes.

8: Retributive Armor, redesign it to be comparable to the other GM’s.

9: Protectors Impact, get rid of the falling stuff. Make it grant precision based on vitality instead.

10: Honorable staff, make the + boon duration apply regardless of weapon with bonus if you have a staff.

11: Empowering Might. Increase the duration of might applied to 8 seconds.

12: Battle Presence, make it a base line effect so that activating resolve is a real choice.

As far as things that are very bad or broken go

1: Sword AA after 3 years can still be reflected (rev had that fixed within a week)

2: Sword number 3 doesn’t actually block anything despite what it says it “absorbs”. The projectiles it fires are also so slow they can be strafed.
(make it a personal 2s block so it has synergy with traits)

3: Scepter AA is still so slow it can be strafed when the target is beyond 600 range.

4: Hammer AA is so slow that most people refuse to use it unless they have to. (if they would remove a pulse from symbol of protection then lower the AA cast time to 1/2 second and remove aftercast it would be fine)

5: Hammer number 3 both the projectile and attack are so slow they can be strafed when beyond 600 range.

6: Hammer number 4 can be extremely easily avoided.

7: Hammer number 5 needs to be able to be casted while on the move.

8: Mace AA heal needs to actually scale with healing power.

9: Torch number 5 should clear less conditions on allies but also effect the guardian.

10: Staff just needs a total rework as nobody ever really wants to use it and hasn’t for years.

11: Change Longbow 5 to be a cone shaped immobilize (2 seconds) + burn (3 stacks for 3 seconds) then lower the cool down and speed up the cast time.

Try http://gw2skills.net/editor/?vVAQNAseTn8cCVDhVdCeDB8DhlGi6aY3yAAbCiguUe4T+nH-TpBFAB9XGQgDBABPAAAOCA6s/QbnAAA on a guard or

http://gw2skills.net/editor/?vdAQFASncTB1XhlXBeeBEqilJjKc7Smwieur79W8ZKgAA-TpgTABAs/wwlBAA on an engineer.

The healing values shown are actually lower then their actual numbers.

The only thing that can really pose a threat to them is a condi reaper with a decent amount of boon corrupt. Anything else they can generally 1v2 quite easily for quite a while until help comes.

As the title says. Anet please stop stacking thieves and warriors on my team.

Seems like every game I get 3/5-4/5 of my team stacked with thieves and warriors. Please just stop it.

Having that many thieves & or warriors is a 95% chance of certain loss.

MaximillianVonSchatten.6278:

cranos.5913:

I still feel like guardian or at least DH should’ve gotten a perma 25% movement speed like chronos. I’m personally not rly feeling the move faster under aegis trait. It’s not like you have aegis in abundance for pvp modes where mobility actually matters because of how weak the the boon rly is there. Furthermore actually using retreat for aegis uptime would make the trait useless as it already gives you swiftness.

I would kill to have a speed buff on guard and would give up almost any trait to get it except for meditation mastery.

Personally I would be in favor of them changing signet of wrath to provide a passive run speed boost on the passive effect.

Then they could change the active to immobilize the target and apply 3-5 stacks of bleeding for 5 seconds and immobilize for 3 seconds.

Lexander.4579:

Ragnar the Rock.3174:

Liewec.2896:

Darknicrofia.2604:

if you’re losing to a DH that’s using 3 or 4 traps on his bar, it really is a L2P issue.

yeah, how are people having trouble counterplaying invisible traps waiting to deal 100%-dead unblockable dmg in 2 seconds combined with daze, slow, immobilize and knockdown?

its so easy to counterplay!

All the traps can actually be blocked.

test of faith is unblockable, and healing trap, well even if its dodged or blocked it still heals the guardian so thats as good as undodgeable and unblockable, especially considering that in total it heals for a 8.6k whooping bullkitten HP + 1.3k regeneration

that makes 2 most used traps pretty much uncounterable and goes to show how much dhs themselves know about their class lol

Actually test of faith can be blocked, they changed that a few weeks back.

The healing trap is a healing spell, if it could be dodged & make the guard get no healing then nobody would ever use it. It would also require the same downside be applied to the ranger trap heal thus making it crap.

InsidiousWaffle.7086:

Traps.

Currently traps invalidate thief, and it’s not a l2p issue. There is no way for a thief to deal good damage to a DH on point, even if I use up cooldowns(shadowstep in, trigger traps, back out) DH can just instantly re-apply them with 0 opening between.

on the “no viable builds” arguement, at least guard has 3 semi-viable builds, in the form of Medi-Trapper, Burn, and Bunker(Kind of)

If you dodge the traps as soon as they trigger (they even have a daze if traited) you can avoid the entire damage of the trap and its effects.

If they are invisible that is a glitch and not so much a problem with the trap as is with Anet being too lazy to fix it.

As for the concept of traps in general before hit went into beta when they announced Dh would have traps many people begged them not to put them on DH.
They did this because Traps by their design are good for ambush against lower skill enemies but crap vs good players.
If they had simply made the DH use necro style marks or wells instead of traps they would
1: not be good for ambush style attacks
2: not be able to be placed before hand
but
3: Be ranged
4: Share boons granted with allies

This would have made them better for balance at both low and high end play.

Liewec.2896:

Darknicrofia.2604:

if you’re losing to a DH that’s using 3 or 4 traps on his bar, it really is a L2P issue.

yeah, how are people having trouble counterplaying invisible traps waiting to deal 100%-dead unblockable dmg in 2 seconds combined with daze, slow, immobilize and knockdown?

its so easy to counterplay!

All the traps can actually be blocked except the barrier on maw stoping you from just walking away (unless you have stability)

Darknicrofia.2604:

DH is just the fancy icing on an extremely poorly constructed cake.

Fix the cake, aka base guardian traits and weapon skills.

This ^

40%+ of the core guardian traits are crap and never used by any sane person.

The same goes for spirit weapons, signets and half the consecrations.

The hammer, staff, sword & scepter also all have numerous problems keeping them from shining.

Dh traps are only good vs idiots.

If you dodge ASAP when you see the trap trigger (or daze happens) you can avoid the damage and other effects of the trap entirely.

This is why DH is rarely seen at high end PvP and not taken at all in the ESL.

Frankly as far as unscathed contender goes I’d say rework it a bit.

Make it give + 7% damage while under the effects of protection.

I say this because in an organized group protection has a decent up time where as in any challenging content or PvP AEGIS uptime is near zilch.

@ Arcaedus

Love that idea for putting a symbol on sword #2.

If it had one I’d like to see it grant might.

Something like

Flashing Blade: Teleport to your foe blinding them, When you arrive place a symbol of might.
Symbol of Might: Grants 10 seconds of might per pulse, pulses 3 times, does 100 + 25% of power as damage per pulse.

The main gripes most guards have with shouts are the following

1: Save yourselves absorbs conditions from nearby allies before rune of the trooper or pure of voice effect conditions.

2: Save yourselves doesn’t give the guardian any resistance which can lead to it being a suicide button.

3: Hold the line & Retreat cool downs are kinda hefty given what they do. Having them reduced to 30 second base cool downs would be nice.

Like your idea of having pure of voice and altruistic healing combined. Could finally make the valor line not an absolute must for PvP.

Few critiques

The traits in zeal that are minors really need to be swapped out with some of the majors.

I say this because they concern symbols which only a few guardian weapons have high uptime on and and several dont have at all.
Minors should boost things that all specs of a class have access to regardless of weapon choice.
Majors should be about specialization and choice.

The traits Holy Cause and Radiant Retaliation are Op and would encourage a very passive game play would would be bad for the class.

Empowering Might Has a Cd for a reason due to how it works with altruistic healing. The only way to really improve it without making it OP is to increase the duration of might applied.

The new Pure of Voice would be a bit too powerful if save yourselves acted properly with the trooper rune and pure of voice as well as the Cd reductions you specified in the other thread.

Unscathed Pursuer, doesn’t really make much sense and wouldn’t be much use given how easy AEGIS is to remove.

Pure of Heart is actually quite nice where it is.

Battle Presence should really just be a base line effect to make it into an actual choice of weather or not to active resolve.

The new versions of Perfect Inscriptions, Stalwart Defender, Retributive Armor, Purity of Body, & Indomitable Courage vary between slightly overpowered to completely OP due to how strong they are and how some of them interact with other effects/traits.

A few critiques

Virtues
Frankly it would probably be better to just roll the first virtues minor trait into the base virtue activation effects.
Courage, the refresh rate would be a bit much when taken in consideration with other AEGIS applications, maybe make it 30 seconds.

Litany of Wrath, if the base healing were increased this much the healing from damage done would need to be reduced.

Save yourselves. One of the main problems this utility has is that pure of voice and the trooper rune don’t activate before it does. If they did and it gave some resistance then it would be fine.

Receive the Light. This is already as much as a 7k heal for the guardian and allies. The main problem is its directional. If it were a true AOE then it would be fine.

Stand your ground, is actually fine as is.

Feel my Wrath. Its good as is, any lower and the quickness would likely be cut.

Sanctuary. The main problem this skill has is its made obsolete by stability and does not stop ground targeted spells from being cast under it.

Signet of Mercy. Frankly it should just give a flat +% increase to all healing done.

Signet of Courage. The active should really be changed. With that long of a cast time & that big of a heal there is no way to ever truly balance it.

You left out Signet of Wrath and Bane signet

Signet of Wrath should be changed to grant + run speed as a passive and the active should immobilize and bleed (5 stacks for 5 seconds)

Bane Signet should be changed to knock down all enemies in a narrow fast moving cone

The spirit weapons rework idea is nice but would need a ton of balancing.

Few things on Hammer.
If the last AA were 1/2 second with no after cast they could take one pulse of the symbol and end up with the same overall damage output but a much faster AA chain.

As for mace AA, the main problem it has is it does not scale at all with healing power. The base healing is alright. Fix the first part and it would be fine.

Like the ideas.

Just have to pray that after all this time Anet does something good.

RashanDale.3609:

Ragnar the Rock.3174:

Having it function as is (basically like a mana shield from mage in WOW) prevents the necro from being able to be balanced.

How’s that? I dont see a necro with death shroud as unbalanceable

In a few ways.

1: Having such a powerful form of defense which is mostly passive prevents the necro from getting things like group support because doing so would make it too powerful.

2: Since life force starts at zero, generally does not scale based on how many targets you are fighting & does not degenerate or regenerate to a specific point when outside of combat. (this causes life force to be a very strong profession mechanic for 1v1 but get progressively worse the more enemies your fighting & is compounded to how it absorbs damage like a mana shield)

Obtena.7952:

I don’t understand why this is a problem … do you expect all classes to be all meta for every game element all the time? That’s a very unreasonable expectation … you have played other MMO’s correct?

No I don’t expect everything to be meta.

I am quite disappointed however at how many things on the guardian were either created badly in the first place, received uneeded nerfs or just left alone to become crap. (Hence why nearly half the guardian utility skills are rarely if ever used in any game node as well as nearly half the traits being crap and numerous weapon skills having serious problems)

It is also quite disappointing how Anet ignores the advice of many of the top tier players, especially when they are warning them not to do something. (for instance giving guardian traps, they knew the design & balance problems that traps have, were asked not to but did anyway.)

The first could be easily remedied if they would take some of their profits to hire some people to update skills on guardian & other classes.
The second shows a disconnect with how the class actually functions & what it is actually capable of. It could easily be solved by actually sitting down with the top end players and talking to them about how they use it & its problems.

If guardian were back in the PvP meta you would expect to see at least one of them in the semi finals or more of them at high level play where they are nearly non existent.

As for weather it’s op or not, its far from it unless your opponent is an idiot.
This is because guardian lacks depth, can be quite predictable and thus easily countered by many specs.

ronpierce.2760:

Alekt.5803:

Exciton.8942:

Ragnar the Rock.3174:

I was kind of hoping we would at least see a single guardian, but I guess that likely wont happen till scepter, hammer, sword & the 50% of traits that are crap get some love which is unlikely to ever happen.

Sad that there is still so much stacking going on.

LB DH is too easy to counter. Unless there is another good DH build not revolving around LB, they won’t have the chance to be on the competitive scene.

Well, it can’t resolve around trap buffs. That’s for sure.

Guardian/DH could easily be made better by buffing/fixing/changing Weapon skills (excluding LB). Traps are okay, a little weak competitively but they’re okay, Medis are okay.

Virtues are sort of okay except how they go on full cooldown if interrupted with no benefit (easy solution is to put the use triggers at the start such as the stability on Courage, and heal/condi removal on Resolve) and then having them go on full cooldown would be a non-issue. As well as making courage instant when traited. Minor quality of life changes there.

What really should be boosted though are the old weapons. Sword could be significantly more reliable, etc. Changes to the weapons is how I’d fix DH, and it’sdhelp out the base class a bit.

This ^ core guardian both weapons (sword, hammer, scepter, staff), utilities (signets, shouts, spirit weapons & most consecrations), virtues & traits (nearly half) are crap that either need major love or to be scrapped and redesigned

Alekt.5803:

Exciton.8942:

Ragnar the Rock.3174:

I was kind of hoping we would at least see a single guardian, but I guess that likely wont happen till scepter, hammer, sword & the 50% of traits that are crap get some love which is unlikely to ever happen.

Sad that there is still so much stacking going on.

LB DH is too easy to counter. Unless there is another good DH build not revolving around LB, they won’t have the chance to be on the competitive scene.

Well, it can’t resolve around trap buffs. That’s for sure.

I have hated the idea of traps since they were first announced.

They are either extremely powerful vs noobs that don’t know how to predict and avoid them or crap vs intelligent players.

They should have given DH wells or necro style marks instead.
They would
1: Have no ambush so no QQ
2: Not be able to be layed long before hand
but
3: Be ranged
4: Share boons granted with allies.

All in all much better for high end and low end balance.

Nova Stiker.8396:

This is ArenaNet, the only way they know how to balance is by power creeping everything else or more likely hitting it with a sledge hammer.

fixed it for ya

I was kind of hoping we would at least see a single guardian, but I guess that likely wont happen till scepter, hammer, sword & the 50% of traits that are crap get some love which is unlikely to ever happen.

Sad that there is still so much stacking going on.

Honestly shroud is just a left over from the betas.

Originally it served as a downed state for necro but at the last moment they changed it to serve as a toggle ability so long as you have the life force.

Having it function as is (basically like a mana shield from mage in WOW) prevents the necro from being able to be balanced.

There was a suggestion a few years back about how they could change life force to act like an energy system (Much like the rev one, where it would regenerate or degenerate outside of combat to somewhere between empty and full) and using a full set of f1-f5 keys instead of a toggle.
The idea was to make it into a more active resource system with each attack from f1-f5 consuming life force and each normal attack generating life force (so it generated smoothly with scaling based on enemies hit)

The main differences between the f1-5 skills it had and the toggled ones now was that
f1: Was a volley attack with a 1/2 second cast time
F2: Was ground targeted and applied chill + fear in AOE on landing
F3: was life transfer
F4: was tainted Shackles
F5: was a new ability that generated an absorb effect on you and slowly healed nearby allies while channeled.

The F5 duration and cool down could be debated but it would absorb all incoming physical damage & prevent the application of new conditions while channeled at the cost of life force consumed every second.

Really the problem I have with reaper is not the condition damage output but the sheer amount of boon corrupts they have.

Having them on weapon skills that have a CD is fine, but having so many on shroud activation & scepter AA is just over the top.

Deathly chill could stand a slight reduction, however that would hurt them quite a bit, perhaps they could up their bleed damage a bit to compensate.

Maybe if those get tuned down they could up some of their group healing abilities.

As for scrapper, they could stand to adjust the numbers on various sources of healing so that they actually need an investment in healing power to be at the level they are now.

You can use it if you want just know that even with burning + condition damage maxed out your damage output will suffer quite a bit because of the + power loss.

I would suggest http://gw2skills.net/editor/?vVAQNAW7flsAhyhY3QwaIwPEHBEVeBbwJ0GAPwbe32IIDA-TFiAABA8EAAS9HuvIAepkzSlgws/QM6GuW5AhAWMHA-w
or
http://gw2skills.net/editor/?vVAQNAW7fn8cCddidDBWDB8DhlEi6aZDgEIb/6vBUe5b+rH-TFiAABws/AQq/AwTA4vLCQM6GuW5gXK5sUJIhAWMHA-w

Few things to note even with the changes burning builds only tend to work in small groups, larger ones will have so much condi clear it will be removed to fast.

Both builds cause your burn procs from justice to become AOE. This is probably the only way the staff can become an actual DPS weapon, but due to its wide arc on its AA it can become a very good one. The same is true for anything that does AOE and hits multiple times like procession of blades.

The trap variant can be especially brutal if you use it with full traps layed on a choke point that you know they will be wondering through because it can put up allot of burning & cripple in AOE.

Hope you have fun with it.

misterdevious.6482:

Try incorporating just 1 spirit weapon into the following types of builds:

• Heavy Burning Build: Hammer traited for burning will actually stack burning.
• Healing Build: Longbow can fill the screen with green numbers in a WvW chokepoint.
• Ranged Build: The Shield can provide you with a projectile bubble to pew-pew from if you are willing to chase it. The sword/hammer can chase foes long distance.
• Lockdown Build: The hammer has a knockdown on a short cooldown with an additional interrupt on the end of its auto-attack chain. Combine with other immob/knockdown abilities.

Look at what they do… figure out what kinds of builds they would be good in… then try them. If they don’t work the way you think they should, come back and report why they didn’t work.

All the reasons they don’t work have been pretty well explained.

They die extremely easily outside of pve where they have a 90% damage reduction.

They have long down times once they die

They bring very little damage considering how much support & sustain you must sacrifice to bring them & even then have the first 2 problems.

At this point most guardians would rather they scrap them and create something new instead of simply buffing them because the last thing they want is to end up as minion mancer which takes no skill to play.

The real problem with guardian skills like spirit weapons, signets, traits, staff, sword, (some hammer skills) & scepter is 3 fold

1: Since so few ppl use them anyway Anet has basically decided they don’t rank high enough on the list of things to fix to warrant fixing anytime soon or ever if things keep popping up which they definitely will.

2: They aren’t sure what to do to fix these problems on guardian as well as other classes & likely haven’t really taken the time to even think about it since they are so busy doing other things.

&

3: Their past design changes to these skills/weapons/traits made many of them even worse then they were before so they are hesitant to even look in their direction for fear of making them worse.

The solution to all of the above would be to hire a few more NEW people to handle the problem and tell some of the people with prior experience to get out of the way.

Looking at their profits they could possibly do this, but then again we don’t have access to their financials so who knows.

cranos.5913:

Sadly any healing spec will lose from druid because of the unique offensive buffs it gives. I personally would be in favor of finally having a spec that deals proper sustained condi dmg on par with engi or a unique party buffing ability like GW1’s paragon.

It rly does look fun tho.

This ^.

And to really do that the spec would need to grant access to at least a second condition.

You also have to remember that tomes are extremely powerful and if freely Toggle’able or with CD’s that start once stowed they are essentially kits. Engineers give up access to secondary weapons and weapon swap in order to get kits, I doubt Anet would let guardians skirt by without similar sacrifices.

As for things that grant unique boons & have decently sustained condition damage, I have been messing around on an elite spec I idea called the Sun Spear.

The idea hit me when playing around in the Maguuma Jungle around the overgrown Balthazar temple. If there were places like this lost everywhere who’s to say that a living story or expansion couldn’t have a lost library, tomb or temple with knowledge long thought lost to the ages which when learned allowed the guardian to become the Sun Spear. (A 2 handed spear using paragon-ish elite spec that brings righteous judgement down on enemies to deal damage, burn & bleed them while buffing allies)

The down side to chants is that unless they are true toggle abilities like what the herald on Rev has they are prime targets for being interrupted which would make the class very easy to lock down.

Other then that the one critique I have is that the tomes aside from wrath are far too powerful to be anything but elites unless they are severely toned down in which case allot of people probably wouldn’t want them.

Knowing this I would say they would fit better as elite skills with moderate Cool cool downs on their abilities but only moderate effects and have them be freely toggle’able (Much like engineer mortar kit)

This would be best in terms of balance. I say this because engineer has to sacrifice a secondary weapon slot in order to have access to kits & essentially having multiple kits would require similar levels of sacrifice. (which could be alright if all the kits were done well and they were able to fill all roles like engineer kits can, but this is guardian and Anet we’re talking about so the chances are slim)