Also, 1v1 against Reaper with full Life Force is one of the hardest 1v1’s for every class, which is why they start with none in sPvP.
This ^ is actually something that should be addressed.
If they were to make life force a bit more like rev energy in that it starts out at a set % when spawning and outside of combat degenerates to a set % then it would be better for balance.
I say this because in a fight where you cannot reliably generate life force (foe being stealthed or constantly avoiding hits) your more or less screwed.
On the flip side if you enter a fight with full life force your enemy is pretty much SOL assuming equal skill on both sides.
Wait, you’re a necro asking to be nerfed? Other classes asking for necro nerfs are becoming crafty in how they present it.
Exactly, this is a nice lil “nerf this” thread masquerading as civilized suggestions for improved balance
As a necro player the only thing that really bothers me is the sheer amount of boon corrupts the class now has.
The conditions themselves are not so much a problem caused by the necro as a problem with various specs not having enough ways to cleanse conditions.
My suggestion would be to get rid of the on shroud boon corrupts & the one on scepter AA as it would likely be better for balance all around.
I would expect them to add something else however to compensate.
More consistent healing to allies or protection for my group would do wonders for necro and would not be out of the question if the corrupts were tuned down.
no, spirit weapons in their current iteration is NOT fine and never WILL be fine.
they’ll either remain worthless or buffed to such ridiculous levels that they’re essentially turret engies 2.0
having AI play for you is bad game design. spirit weapons in GW1 enhanced your attacks with different functionality (giving AoE damage, armor piercing, life steal etc)
Shiro’s heal is a step in the right direction of what spirit weapons should do.
I am all for this. Rather then adding more AI, we should look at what the Ritualist were given in Guild Wars 1.
I have been suggesting something like this for quite some time.
Make them something that cannot be killed and provides a stat buff to nearby allies while out (single stat) while providing a secondary buff to or around the guardian.
They would need a decent up time to be worth it however.
Hammer has highest sustained (over time) dps and brings protection.
Thats what makes it good for raids because it reduces damage and the boss has extremely high health to let that sustained dps build up.
In anything else I cant really see using it because its so slow, highly telegraphed and requires you & targets to stand in one spot to make use of the symbol.
The guardian healing output is less then half what a druid can do & about 3/4 what an ele or ventari rev can do.
They justify it being lower cause guard brings AEGIS but given how often hits come in the raid and higher fractals AEGIS just is not worth the lower healing output. (they are designed around rapid hits for lower damage instead of large less often hits)
Eh when it comes to chill I think they should give it the same treatment they did to poison.
All chill no matter who applied it does damage (a small amount) and slows movement speed & recharge times.
But then let it stack.
The trait can just be changed to increase scaling.
As for weather or not necro puts out too much pressure, the condi pressure by itself is high but acceptably so.
The sheer amount of boon corrupts is where it crosses the line, especially on the scepter AA & on shroud skills. (having it on weapon skills & signets is fine so long as they cannot be spammed)
If this were to get toned down I would say the necro should get something else however. Maybe access to group protection or a little more consistent group healing.
Interesting… I’d have expected sword/torch from such a build. Or are you using torch on your other weaponset?
nah I just use the torch trait.
I picked shield cause:
projectile blocker/ aoe heal
aoe aegis/protection/cone attack
been playing around with shattered aegis
oh and I have flameseeker prophecies ;-)
I wish shattered AEGIS did physical damage and an AOE 3 second burn or just did 3 stacks of AOE burning for 3 seconds.
To wreck somebody with spirit weapons, you need to invest heavily in Condition Damage, Burn Duration, Aoe Aegis, AoE Retal, AoE Blind, have at least one way to immobilize your foe, and have a way to repeatedly cripple your foe. It can be done.
Most Guardians take Virtues for decent burning. Burning Spirit weapons provide an alternative way to dish out AoE burning damage… for 30 seconds at a time. They also serve as allies to put AoE Retaliation and F1 burning buff on when you are by yourself. The majority of the time, the spirit weapon skill is a waste on your bar because it is sticking around when it isn’t needed, is on a long cooldown, takes a long time to resummon, then takes time chasing your target. And when you do activate a command skill, it often misses (Sword) or falls short (hammer).
There are niche uses. The shield bubble is really good at projectile defense if you can get the hang of where it will activate. The bow on a healing build can fill the screen with green numbers in a WvW chokepoint.
While they may do decent burn damage the spirit weapons are still easily killed
The guardian also effectively loses most of their personal sustain, condition cleanses etc…
This means skilled players will kill them easily or just toy with them & in any group setting the guardian will be easily mowed down.
Anet really should just scrap the current iteration of spirit weapons and either make them into a mix of traited banners/turrets or a copy paste of ele conjure weapons (with a timer instead of a weapon use counter & for the guardian only)
Most guardians I know would rather they just scrap them completely and make something new.
As is they are an easily killed source of AI damage that is crap otherwise.
If they just buffed their survivability & AI you would basically end up with a weaker version of MM necro. (which is extremely simplistic)
Starting from scratch would allow them to make something new without the current constraints they have.
Allot of the people I know would like to see them made into weapon summons similar to the ele weapon summons, just timer based and for guardian use only.
Others would like to see them made into banner or (traited) turret type summons.
If done well either would be an improvement of how they are currently.
Anything that allows shield to be useful. Shield skills are good but the item cannot be used since the only 1h is pistol, and if you’re using pistol you are running condi which means you need offhand pistol as well for blowtorch. So I would take any 1h weapon that is either power or support. Dagger is probably the least awful thematically, though mace already has some engineer-y skins like fixer upper (not fix-r-upper lol) and various hammer looking skins.
This ^
Off hand shield is already quite nice but only ever seen if a engi is using a main hand pistol.
So
Mace
dagger
main hand sword
main hand axe
would all be nice choices, though mace would probably fit best.
I wish you luck but any suggestions are probably useless.
I say this as someone who has helped keep suggestion threads alive in the guardian forums for years after they started, threads that had hundreds if not thousands of replies saying they were good ideas, the same threads that never saw so much as an admission or hint on Anet’s end that the guardian skills/traits/weapon skills were not performing at a place that was good.
Neat idea but Sacrificing so much personal DPS/utility to aid others just doesn’t really work in this game because it would need to be a very large boost to warrant the personal loss which in turn causes allot of QQ both ways. (look at how well Ventari stance is viewed by rev players)
Frankly I think it would be allot better received & much easier to balance if the effects didn’t cost you so much personally (dps loss etc…) to use…. even if that meant they had to be toned down a bit.
1: The dps they measured was with hammer and all the symbol traits with everything best in slot and a team that boosted it pretty much perfectly (full might stacks, perma fury, pretty much constant quickness as well as many other buffs)
2: Due to it relying so much on symbols any movement on the targets end can hurt your dps output quite a bit because symbols are stationary.
3: Due to it using the hammer it means you basically just sit there and auto attack which without (and even with) constant quickness is ungodly slow and boring.
So yes its nice to have a guardian build that is good for raids, lets just hope they spice the guardian hammer up a bit without hurting the over all DPS potential because its very slow and boring.
IDK if I would say the pure dps build is meta though.
Traps are just so easy to avoid and the lack of CC on the class can be glaring.
Guardian however does make quite a good bruiser with some heals to help allies. (just prey to the light you don’t run into a condi reaper with any life force built up)
As for that 24k number I’d like to know who got that & how they got it. Last I checked the guardian maxed out around 18k and 24k would be a decent bump.
Frankly I would be alright with them reducing the cast time of the last AA to 1/2 second even if that meant they needed to reduce the number of protection pulses from 3 to 2 and reduce the damage somewhat.
The overall damage would still be the same, the burst would still be largely on mighty blow and the protection up time would be the same, the AA would just be faster.
I would love 20s of swiftness on a 30s cooldown. That means a Pure of Voice +Honorable Staff build would have 100% swiftness uptime.
Actually if you were using pack runes, runes of air etc… (something with +30% boon duration or swiftness duration) you could reach 100% swiftness uptime with retreat alone if it had a 30 second base CD & you took pure of voice.
I wish aegis stacked like stability and was notched off per block as attacks hit.
That could make it far to powerful if you had multiple people able to apply it.
Simply making it not be removed when you have another source of block would be a nice little improvement.
As for ways they could actually change AEGIS to be more useful
I would love if they made AEGIS block based on the damage number stopped (say 2k with considerable boosts from traits that make it get extra scaling off of vitality, healing power, toughness etc..) instead of the number of attacks, then lowered the CD’s on things that applied AEGIS.
This ^ would make it work much better in new content, WvW and PVP where attacks are generally lighter and more rapid.
It would also differentiate the guardian from other healers. As is the guardian already has a lower healing output then ele, engi, druid and rev. This would allow them to be the healer that prevents a good deal of damage in the first place instead of healing it all afterwords.
Note I dont take big game hunter because unless something is about to die and you have the second radiance minor trait to reset justice it just isn’t worth taking.
Also note that the build tool does not properly show that writ of persistence gives symbols an additional 2 pulses. That with hammer is a significant DPS and protection increase.
Hammer will still feel ungodly slow however and vs other players that makes it very easy to counter.
because giving guardians actually useful combo fields is forbidden.
Light fields used to actually be more useful.
In the closed beta before head start blast finishers on light fields did an AOE blind which worked quite well with the vulnerability on blind trait.
They got worse again with the introduction of light aura because instead of simply giving retaliation when you did a leap or blast the aura required you to get hit first before it would give a short duration retaliation boon.
^that made light fields not combo well with altruistic healing and further made self sustain with anything but meditations crap.
Depends what you want to use it for, however it can work with mace, greatsword or bow depending on your build.
In general the hammer is ungodly slow, and the constant light fields can often override fields that are better.
In PvE it can have uses due to constant protection, tho it still feels extremely slow.
In PvP the only real good thing about it is mighty blow due to that skill having a low Cd and decent damage.
everything else is either extremely easily countered by stability & teleports or far to slow to get use out of vs intelligent players.
As someone who has played guardian since head start beta I would gladly take a slight increase on true shot Cd (to say 6 seconds) if they did the following.
1: Make it no longer root you when cast
2: Slightly decrease the cast time of the auto attack (to 1/2 second)
3: Give true shot some type of secondary effect. (weakness, blind, cripple etc.. something)
4: Change the number 5 to a cone shaped attack that immobilizes (2 seconds) & bleeds (3 stacks for 10 seconds) all enemies it strikes with a 3/4 second cast time & 24 second CD.
Also good but longbow 5 should be a conal immob with high base damage, bleed is usless
Eh frankly I’d prefer a lower base damage + bleeds with really good scaling on the damage.
That along with various trait changes could end up making carrion, sage or merc very good on a guardian. 9the main thing holding back condi guardians after all is a lack of other damaging conditions besides burns.)
For that matter resistance and stability could likely receive a change in what they are corrupted into.
Having them corrupted into chill & fear tends to be a little too much.
Honestly the boon corrupt via traits and off hand dagger is fine.
Its the boon corrupt on scepter AA that just seems broken.
Whenever I play my necro it just feels like cheese now to fight anything with any boons because of that AA, especially anything with stability or resistance.
Given all the other ways to corrupt boons I can honestly say that I don’t want or need it on the AA & that it even makes me afraid of what Anet will do when the eventual nerf comes.
As someone who has played guardian since head start beta I would gladly take a slight increase on true shot Cd (to say 6 seconds) if they did the following.
1: Make it no longer root you when cast
2: Slightly decrease the cast time of the auto attack (to 1/2 second)
3: Give true shot some type of secondary effect. (weakness, blind, cripple etc.. something)
4: Change the number 5 to a cone shaped attack that immobilizes (2 seconds) & bleeds (3 stacks for 10 seconds) all enemies it strikes with a 3/4 second cast time & 24 second CD.
Frankly as someone who has played guardian since head start I would love it if they would change the traps into necro style marks or even wells.
That way nobody could complain about being ambushed by them.
But at the same time they would be ranged & share any boons granted with allies which would fit so so much better with the archer feel the spec is supposed to have.
(they would also make for some interesting rune choices)
Given that they said that guardian was falling behind in how well it could cleanse conditions it is far past time they look at the shouts.
Retreat could stand to be 30 seconds base.
Hold The line could also stand to see some serious improvements.
Say up the protection duration to 6 seconds base & up the regeneration to 8 seconds base then lower the Cd to 30 seconds.
This would go a way towards making shouts closer to meta.
After that they would just need to look at hammer, scepter, staff, sword, signets and consecrations……..
Lastly as for light fields, they need a complete overhaul and light aura just needs to go.
I mean light aura has to be the most useless thing ever, needing to get hit first so that you can get a retaliation boon that is already nerfed in PvP ? That just sucks.
Zealots embrace could easily be doubled in speed or get a increase in speed & width of the cone.
Banish could easily be sped up to 3/4 second and be allowed to hit multiple enemies.
The ward could also easily be changed to be usable while moving, though given how plentiful stability and teleports are I don’t know how much good the last one would actually do.
Eh frankly they could keep the feel of the AA by reducing the last attacks cast time to 1/2 second, removing the after cast & reducing the symbol duration to 1 second (2 pulses)
That would leave you with the same protection uptime but speed up the chain by a good second.
Another easy fix they could do is take a note from the warrior hammer AA chain and always let it complete even if the swing doesn’t hit anything.
This ^ would mean that even if your enemy dodges away you will still complete the AA chain and lay down a symbol making them less likely yo want to move back to that spot & giving yourself/allies some protection.
I certainly feel like all is not as appears with the DH F3, but as one of the stickied threads points out: “Submit profession bugs to the game bugs forum”. It will probably get more relevant eyes over there. =)
This ^.
Its quite likely that none of the Devs read the guardian forum or even play guardian for that matter given how often they have talked about abilities thinking they were a guardians and they turned out to be another classes.
If they did the hammer, sword, staff, scepter, consecrations & signets likely wouldn’t have all the problems they do.
The signet trait should be nerfed either to only corrupt 1 boon (not 2) or to only give 1 stack of might (not 3). That is the only place a nerf (if it makes sense) would be good
That and the boon corrupt on scepter needs to be moved to the number 2 ability.
Having boon corrupt on aa is just an insanely bad decision no matter how you look at it.
Having it on the number 2 means its an AOE but cannot be spammed and if someone is paying attention they can dodge it.
reaper and necromancer in general is still vulnerable to team focus because he does not have block/immune/dodge skills.
And that’s what will hurt them competitively. They’re great 1v1, and that’s usually what dictates who is “OP” early in a patch. It’ll blow over I’d imagine as people get more organized.
I’d gladly reduce some chill damage or need some spite traits if it actually meant we’d get more diversity and finally some decent non-shroud blocks/evades.
This ^.
Reaper didn’t need all those new ways to corrupt boons.
What it needed was team support skills (protection, AOE heals etc…) and ways to stay alive that don’t eat up life force.
I saw a very very good suggestion over a year ago for how they could overhaul the life force mechanic to make a very flexible & easily balanced f1-f5 system. It would have made the necro much better for team play & better balanced.
Sadly they have shown they are unwilling to truly overhaul the core problems that classes have & more often then not wont even look at touching traits, weapon skills & utility skills (the guardian is proof of that with 50% of theirs being outdated crap)
Make the guardian AA continue through the entire chain even if it doesn’t hit anything.
It would be a huge improvement & not without precedent as warrior AA chain on its hammer does this already.
Main problem guardian has is that engineer, rev & ele all do everything it can do just as well or better + they have things like run speed boosts, reveal & more to much much more CC.
They also have anywhere between 10-25% higher damage potential.
So yea guardian can work but unless your attached to the class there is no real reason to play it vs playing one of them.
Given the amount of condi spam still going on & the fact that necros can so easily spam boon corruption I have severe doubts amount runing anything with allot of boons as you will just be feeding them extra damage & CC.
I also have severe doubts about the hammer given how slow it is, & the fact that so many people have stability/teleports to get out of the ward.
Its just that everything a guardian can do is done better by an engineer, ele or rev & those classes can do allot more dps, provide allot more CC (especially in former twos case) and bring other things like passive run speed, reveals etc…
To be fair, rev sword 2, and even autoattack 2 in the day, justified it by having a decent (theoretical) range. Good luck hitting anything faster moving than a crate at 600 range, but the range is there, and the graphic clearly shows a projectile.
Guardian sword auto 3 is not much beyond melee range in its effect, there’s nothing about the graphic or in the tooltip to suggest a projectile, and longer-range cone effects like Wave of Wrath and flamethrower are definitely not projectiles. There’s no logical reason why it should be a projectile, and a typical player seeing guardian sword auto 3 being projectile-destroyed (or, worse, reflected) would probably have no idea what’s going on if they hadn’t read about it in the forum or on the wiki. It’s probably why it slipped through the original GW2 beta weekends without someone complaining – because either nobody noticed what was going on or they didn’t realise why it was failing.
Revenant sword auto 2 was at least fairly obvious about being a projectile.
In my experience, projectile hate is relatively uncommon in sPvP, so if Precision Strike actually had a reasonable chance of landing (or forcing the enemy to dodge or block to prevent it from landing) at, say, 450 range or so it would probably be stronger for being a projectile than being a melee-range non-projectile. Compared to guardian sword auto 3, it also has the advantage that if there is projectile hate around, you can use something else like continuing to autoattack (sure, that’s reducing the rev’s DPS, but if the best thing the enemy has to do with projectile hate is to stop a rev from using Precision Strike, they’re really not getting full use of the skill they brought along) – a guardian using sword doesn’t really have any other options (Zealot’s Defense is just more projectiles, after all).
(I am inclined to think that, for all the guardian has problems too, they’re not as bad as the revenant is overall. But when it comes to projectile hate, I think rev sword is still better off than guard sword.)
If you look at what rev has wrong and what guard has wrong they actually closely resemble each other.
Looking at rev it has problems with staff & sword.
It also has a traitline & skill set nobody really wants to use (salvation & centaur stance) Namely because much if it isn’t needed outside very niche situations or other skills do the same thing decently or better
Looking at guardian it has problems with staff, sword & scepter. (namely them being good more or less at the original release of the game but far from it now)
And its problematic traits while not confined to a single line more then could fill one nearly twice over.
It also has entire skill sets like spirit weapons, signets & half the consecrations that nobody really wants to use because there is no need for them or there are much better options.
A good half of the guardian traits are never used for anything by anyone who knows what they are doing.
The same goes for any utility type other then meditations & shouts (and the occasional wall of reflection or cleansing flames)
Guardians also have numerous problems with their weapons like hammer constantly generating light fields and being slow as hell, sword AA missing or being reflectsed (a fix revs got asap but guards have had for 3+ years) and scepter AA being so slow you can strafe around it if beyond 600 range.
+1 to this. It’s one the most useless ways to cure conditions in the game at the moment. Spirit weapons in general could use an overhaul and they could definitely start with this bow.
This ^.
Sadly if you expect Anet to actually fix the many many many traits, utility skills & weapon skills on guardian your likely never going to be happy.
My best advice is to roll an engineer, rev or elementalist.
They can do everything the guardian can do better + have other things like run speed traits, viable summons, reveals, CC and even stealth in the case of the engineer.
In the long run if enough people stop playing guardian it may actually encourage them to overhaul the class & its many traits, weapons, skills. Nothing else so far has shown any progress towards that.
Frankly having various boon corrupts on a few weapon skills & traits for on shroud enter would have been enough.
If they really wanted to keep more boon corrupt on scepter they could have put it on the #2 so it was AOE.
Having it on the AA is just over the top.
And quite frankly I and many other people I know would have much rather seen necro get some group support (IE protection, swiftness, retaliation & more reliable heals)
As is with the corrupt spam the necro will be insanely powerful 1v1 or 1v2 but still melt vs any more due to lack of support & lack of scaling defenses
Honestly given how badly they have designed the guardian among other things and for how long they have done it I feel like we should flood them with petitions to fire whoever is working on the guardian design team.
At this point they could hire someone completely new to the game and we could probably have a better outcome.
Unless they do a massive amount of fixes for traits, utility skills, sword, hammer & staff (more or less half the traits & utility skills and multiple skills on each weapon) then I would just roll engineer, ele or rev.
Those 3 classes do everything the guard does so much better that it makes me feel like I’m holing my groups back when I play guard.
