Guild Wars 2

I played around all night fiddling with different builds. My GS build was effectively castrated. Basically, I find myself waiting for GS abilities to come back while Thief’s and Mesmers decimate me. Not having a second 10 second attack, like Symbol of Wrath was, forces you into a position where you have no abilities to fire for long periods of time.

By the end of the night, and I spent most of it SPVP on a hammer, I came up with a nifty build that is part Crithammer part Spirit Weapon. And seemed to be doing very well by night’s end. The split was 20/0/30/10/10 taking as many Traits as I could to get Spirt Weapons working while maintaining the Altruistic Healing and Larger Symbols. It led to one of the most hilarous rotations: use spirt hammer to knock down a foe, use the 5 to create a circle around him, then punt him back into the circle, then smash him a bit with your autoattack and by firing off Sword’s damage. Was quite fun.

The Hammer seems like our go-to Weapon now. It is just a testament to how pathetic they have made GS now.

I am afraid that GS is not awesome any more. DPS is reduced and so is survivability. I don’t even have a weapon set I like any more. They all have significant weaknesses.

Boy OP you should rename yourself Captain Obvious. GJ taking 3 days what it took most of us seconds to realise.

In what way is a weapon where your cd lowest an any ‘real’ ability has an 8 sec cd fun to play?

It is just awful to play now.

Not to mention the overall damage nerf is somewhere in the vicinity of 20%. I fire off my ability then sit there and autoattack for 8 sec… its an eternity.

Its boring as puss.

And 2 of our other weapons, scepter and staff are garbage.

The Scepter does pathetic damage. Go fire a warrior rifle and you will see how sad it is. Not to mention that it can easily be dodged and you basically have to fire off 2 skills to get an ineffective AOE attack. Its the most pathetic weapon I have ever experienced in an MMO.

The Staff is not much better.

Not being able to maintain the burning from Symbol of Wrath has brought down GS damage considerably.

Secondly, the weapon has 4 long CD skills now. Its become less fun to play as your always waiting for the CD’s. Before if I could chuck down a Symbol of Wrath to have a little fun between W’s.

I’d love to see it go back to its original CD and give it a might or fury buff instead of Retaliation.

We really have a crap bunch of weapons to use now. The GS used to make the class fun. Thanks a lot Anet for messing this one up.

Grakor.3450:

@ Relentliss.2170 (Since quoting isn’t working.)

Now you’re just being silly. Nerfing retaliation isn’t a buff to mesmers, warriors, or thieves. The boon doesn’t punish them any more than it punishes, say, rangers. Let’s be objective and not complain about things that aren’t actually problems.

Symbol of Wrath was one of my main defenses vs these clowns. Now it is nerfed considerably.

Well this is a nice buff for Warriors, Rogues and Mesmers as Retaliation was a nice consequence for their various abilities. GJ on nerfing a balanced class and helping 3 classes that don’t need it.

I believe the reason you see so many of these is that they can pub stomp with ease. Only the best players caan cope with them.

Spirit Weapons are very powerful if you take all the tactics to make them work and can get the 5 greatsword skill to work. They offer alot of cc and a very high burst. I use them in my spvp spec.

I only go 20 into zeal the extra 10% damage is not a good trade off for more health and 20% reduction off your own cd’s with greatsword.

Rolling towards an enemy is almost as good as a charge.

It depends on the champion. As you go up in level they become less soloable. Also many regenerate more health than we can do damage. Took my friend and I 30 min to kill a troll Champion once.

Any champion that can be kited can be solod by many classes. Ranger especially.

Yeah it would make more sense. Would love to see an option of upgrading it too, so that it heals you for a % of the damage it absorbs before being destroyed.

Last I checked Wall of Reflection might be our most powerful spell.

Useful in both pve and pvp.

I’d check out the Crithammer thread and try a hammer for dungeons

At lvl 80 the temple/god Karma Vendors have items with power/toughness/vitality on the Exotic Karma gear. I have the Shoulders and Boots.

http://dulfy.net/2012/09/08/gw2-templegod-karma-armor-sets/

Most people mix Knights/Emerald (power/precision/toughness) and Valkyrie/Beryl (power/vitality/crit damage) gear to get their desired stats.

Thief, mesmer and warrior

Guardian instead of warrior in 5v5.

Thief and mes are just light years ahead of everyone else.

I am not sure what good speccing condition removal is when some classes just spam it with their 1 skill. I waste an ability slot to remove a series of conditions and they are immediately put back on. Its a strange game meta.

CptCosmic.3156:

Overall it looks like a very poor game mechanics when a thief still hits for that much damage and is able to down a target in under a second when the target carries the soldiers amulet/jewel which should make you very durable against direct damage.

Agree 100%.

Their damage is out of proportion with people’s health. And the way initiative works it promotes spamming.

Damage needs to be looked at.
Initiative needs to cost more as you spam some of the high damage skills or cd needs to be put in.

Ok I am stunned and he winds up and does it again. So if they get one stu n off they can get several if your stun remover is on cd.

Thief is a pathetically op class. Any class with no cd, hitting people for half their health in one hit, in this game is going to be.

Radiance/valor

Everyone swears by gs but I used sword and torch and it was effective. Even gs likes radiance though.

I would just get Valkyrie jewellery. Maybe the cleric’s jewellery for dungeoning or support. The Knight’s armor suits Guardian’s well.

Both the staff and scepter are not fun to use. Nor are they very effective. They have lots of skills that are very lacklustre.

Go pick up a rifle and see how much damage it does. The scepter should do similar damage. It does 25% of a rifle’s damage. Someone might argue that a Warrior has less defense. That is a lie with about 25-28k health and heavy armor it has plenty of defense. They can be more tanky and do more damage at the same time. How is that balanced?

The staff has lots of skills no one uses. Why? Because the benefits of using the skill do not outweigh the cost. If it is supposed to be support, then let it support. Make the 4 skill a big pit of condition removal and any enemy who steps into it picks up burning condition. Have your speed circle also slow enemies. Have the hard to use orb do some nice damage. I don’t really care what, but using it just for just one or two skills means you have 3 or 4 skills that suck.

Swap the person who does Warrior with the person who designed Guardian for the first big patch. Every Warrior weapon is awesome and serves its purpose well. Some of ours just plain suck.

No one likes using these weapons they need to be looked at.

It can and is spammed. I had a dude hit me with 5 pistol whips in about 5 seconds. I have had a dude use 7 heartseekers in a row on me. WTF

Thief is a broken class as it has no cooldowns. Its the only class that can spam high damage abilities. Its not really fair that with high crit you can just spam them. How about every time a skill like Pistol Whip or HS are used within 5 seconds they cost 50% more initiative?

TBH I am a little tired of people just spamming these skills and thinking they are good.

Secondly, Pistol Whip also has too much damage on it to also include a stun. Its got to be either a medium damage ability with a stun or a high damage ability without. Having both is not balanced.

There are times in SPVP that I can not even get a skill off due to the PW spam. I am just in 10 seconds of stun. Thiefs are broken.

Been playing this class since Beta and after a while on her the Guardian feels mediocre. There are a lot of things that are kinda ho-hum, could be better but aren’t. The class is not bad and its reasonably effective, but compared to a thief, warrior or mesmer its pretty mediocre at best.

Suggestions:

Speed when meleing. My number 1 suggestion is to let us spec or give us a signet for a run speed boost. Having to equip a staff, is just garbage. Even a warhorn would be better. It sucks you can not get the same speed boosts that every single other class in the game can get. It really weakens your ability to mele effectively. Speed is very important for pvp, its just a fact of gaming.

Ranged Damage – A Scepter should be on par with a Rifle to be considered a proper ranged weapon. It’s not. If nothing else is done the first skill should be a chain with a damage boost to it. The other skills are ok but the 2 skill needs to apply a symbol, maybe vulnerability. Given the difficulty of the 3rd skill its damage is not very good.

-The Staff needs something better. The 4 skill could be an AOE damage and regen, Holy Light could fall from the sky like an Ele spell. Standing in place in a game full of CC is not very useful. The 5 skill could be useful but the animation and cast time make it nearly useless. Where I want to use it most is when other people are chasing me. Pausing to cast it is not helping me here.

-A proper ranged weapon, a bow, needs to be added at a later date.

Elite Skills – The tomes are quite powerful but the other skill, Renewed Focus is dull at best. Should it renew ALL your skills and maybe be on a 90 sec cooldown, then it would be quite useful. Particularly for blokes who would like to bunker guardian but find after 30 sec that’s it and their cooldowns are gone and with little health they are dead. Rather than rework a lot of skills this skill would be very effective.

-Some new skills could be added, Aura of Wrath, Aura of Courage, granting yourself and allies near you boons. I want to use my elite skills more but their one dimensional nature makes them difficult. A 2 min CD would be fine.

Weapons

Shield – The CD length is garbage. Both skills are useful but more designed for pvp than pve. Your pve guys want to use one but its garbage compared to a Focus. In pvp pushing people off the point is neat but then they can just run through it. Given its cast time it should be like a mini-sanctuary.

Focus – Is good but the buff making bosses 90% immune to blind is garbage.

Sword – best thought out weapon. The arc of the 3 skill could be bigger or if you could cast it on the run to make it more effective. If ranged characters can rapid fire on the run, this skill, given its average damage should be able to be cast on the run.

Torch – I don’t quite get it. Its reasonably effective but kind of underwhelming.

Mace – well thought out weapon.

Hammer – The cast time on the 3rd stage of the first skill is garbage. The leap on the 2nd skill could be double its length and that alone would make the hammer heaps better to use. With a bad Australian latency its a useless weapon for me. The root skill is dumb at best and would be best replaced with an AOE knockdown or even slow.

GS – I have a lot of issues with the 5 skill. Its very tricky to apply and even when applied it often only pulls people half way to you. Even on the golems in the mists it will only pull 2 out of 3 to you. A 33% failure rate is not acceptable. It also has a lot of issues with small terrain features. A well placed pebble can stop it from working. It would also be better if you removed the 1st stage of it. It would make it a lot easier to use.

Symbols – need to lose their long cast time and be done on the run. I’d personally prefer an Aura or even just getting it to be an instant skill would be better.

Yeah its pathetic. Go grab a Rifle and the damage should be similar, but its about 25% of a Rifle’s damage. Not fair IMHO.