Guild Wars 2

Woah, I am glad that this thread gets so much attention, looks like our hammer really needs some good touch.

I run hammer in spvp and pve for a week, along with longbow and it is not too shabby but ham’s damage and skill feel somehow “raw”.
By raw I mean that it lacks something extra to it be it damage or certain triggering effects (excluding AA symbol). I look at scrapper’s hammer AA buffs and Im really wondering why they get so much of the good stuff.
As I said in my last post and considering that ham is a CC/support weapon.
The CC is quite rare. In this case banish should have 12 second cooldown and ring of warding about 20 (both on trait). Now it’s just an occasional CC due to very long cooldowns even with trait. But such weapon that has CC’s should at least have a one strong burst or AA chain.
I think that in supportive and damaging aspect, hammer could keep its normal AA damage and speed but 3rd attack instead of symbol, should give us and our allies a slight heal (like mace) and 1 stab for let’s say 5 seconds.
Now my fav ability which is Mighty Blow should be on 4-5 more seconds longer cooldown but True Shot’s damage, symbol for 6 seconds (pulsing 1 stab every 2 seconds stacking duration and protection in the same interval as it is now) and 5 stacks of might.

I think that chill should proc more frequently like 5 second ICD considering how slow hammer is, or 10 sec CD but faster hammer without symbol.
I see we lack passive stabs where everone else has stabs or evades for days.
How about AA being as slow as it is, but 3rd hit gives 5 second 1 stab and perhaps a slight heal (or maybe 10% damage dealt from hammer is a heal – trait). Now Mighty blow should be on longer cooldown (10 seconds with trait) but do True Shot damage and a 8 second protection symbol with pulsing 1 stab every 2 seconds.
How about that ?

EDIT:
Now it came to me.
If warrior’s hammer is about knocking and stunning, then guard’s hammer should be about being slow but STABLE !
Hammer would be a great pvp weapon then, to give yourself and allies stabs while smackin’ enemies.

Traps are L2P issue, nuff said
After a week of playing traps people started to dodge out of it, Dmaw is pretty obvious and easy to spot if you look closely. Now while playing decent players who know their drill, traps are only a save choice in melee once you and your enemy are tangled in combat and it gets hard to spot the traps or if opponents are out of endurance.
Even with my poor frame rate (if not on points) It’s easy to lure out DH as he hopelessly drops traps thinking that you will come to him, then melee him as his traps are on CD.

I think we could use some fixes on spear because it doesn’t seem to always connect to opponents. It just flies, goes on full cooldown and you can’t pull or even tether your enemy. Yes, without immunity, invulnerability, stab and block SoJ doesn’t seem to always tether on boon-free hostiles.

^ Tis true.
It really looks like guard overall seems that he lacks some good passives like other classes (that we are somehow outdated on core specs) but that’s something from a different barrel, for another thread.

I like it that there are so little people that claim for our hammer to be fine, this means that we are on a good way to start something as most of us agree on updating hammer
If we keep on this kind of threads some of the Devs could see that we crave for some better hammer action.

Respect tha hammah !

What we really need is traps popping on downed enemies or at least full purification heal on demand.

There was a thread somewhere and someone was testing out our weapons’ AA dps without any stats/runes/sigils on heavy golem and it turned out that hammer has the highest dps somehow, well it might be the best AA damage of all our weapons but hey, players are not dummies
This thread may die out soon enough but I’ll carry on the love of hammers until it gets the proper treatment it deserves

Akijo.7395:

So there has been around 10 nerfs since HoT and 8 of them are aimed at Dragonhunters xD
I guess its nice to be the center of the attention?

We gotta get back to that sweet good spot yo !

Azure.8670:

Hammer is one of the best weapons period. The 5 is perfect for certain areas, especially fractals, where you pull enemies and then move around the corner, put out the 5 and it acts as stun and you beat the life out of them.

If Guardian GS wasnt so perfect, Hammer would be extremely popular

GS iz a multi-tool. We need hammer to be the same as it is an iconic weapon of our class throughout all mmorpgs. As we can see, something is surely off if we see hammer guards to be rare like Pepe. Sure, fractals are nice but what about other stuff?
I will fight for the rights of our beloved blunt weapon as we can not have great axes nor polearms

Ragnar the Rock.3174:

The problems with hammer are thus

1: The AA is dreadfully slow & creates a light field that overrides other fields

2: Banish has a long cast time

3: Wards. They are mostly useless against champs/ledgends in PvE & anything with stability or a teleport/shadowstep in PvP.

Sadly they are unlikely to address these problems as they have been around since launch and they have yet to mention anything about them no matter how many complaints they get.

Good point but shield had problems since launch too and it good fixed… well, after a long time but still ^^
My thought is that we could have AA without combo field, but as fast as other hammers and a little 10% AA damage increase to it with a 1 sec cripple every 3rd hit.
Now mighty blow (which feels kind of unmighty now) could have 1 or 2 seconds CD increase but drop the prot field for 4-5 seconds and as it is mighty, it should have 15% critical chance increase (without ICD but with trait).
Now this sounds mighty indeed

This thread is meant to bring constructive feedback to help our beloved hammer get back into the shining light of viability.

Feel free to add suggestions and ideas of what should be changed about hammer and its trait.

If raids will get nerfed too then it will be just like WoW. I call it: People will cry that content is too easy at some point in the future T^T

But seriously, I am not a professional hardcore nor a casual, perhaps something more than middle too, I dunno. Either way, I was born (by being “born” I meant the first time I got into internet) during the era of MMORPG’s when they were a real definition of what this genre is. Let’s take Lineage II for example:

There is a quest line to aquire 3rd tier of your character’s profession. It was a massive grind fest of killing mobs (even previous tiers had lots of running and grinding stuff).
From those years of my childhood I remember NOTHING of anyone whining about those quest lines being tough.

Only those who had unwavering desire to obtain, got it and deserved it, the rest just gave up and that was it.
I do not blame the majority of this community for HP nerf, it’s not their fault that we are being molded in an era of soft-core “guide my hand” MMORPG’s
I don’t spend much time on playing the game now (IRL stuff you know it) and I grind the crap out of this content as hard as I can because I like the challange, even if its a seemingly boring grind. I think like that because I like immersion and if we really lived in a world of fantasy as we do in real life, then this is how it would look like… a huge grind-fest.
We are different and we like various stuff and experiences. HoT should never be that demanding from the start and just kept the vanilla level of things, then there would be less salt.

Trevor Boyer.6524:

Relax

No one said anything about Dragon Hunter being OP. I think people are mostly concerned with the direction of the spvp playing experience when DPS keeps getting jacked up this high.

Last night we had multiple matches where people were running teams of Dragon Hunters, Reapers, Chronomancers and then Tempests for the stun. Most team fights or even 1v1s engaged resulted in both teams exploding immediately and needing to finish/win the team fight while in downed state. This seemed mostly due to too many AoE skills that lock and hold everyone in to place, while AoE DPS is hitting.

This is the giving the game a “suicide bomber” feel rather than an “engage in combat” feel. It’s probably a good idea to turn that DPS down a bit. I mean seriously, it doesn’t even matter if the Dragon Hunter is a poor player that dies in every team fight, as long as he knows how to walk on a point and detonate himself like a nuclear bomb, his team gets to win that team fight.

This kind of overboard DPS detonation is going to bring a lot of low skill cap players in to the pvp community. I’m not saying this is necessarily a bad thing but is this the direction spvp should be going?

Couple of weeks, a little patch here and there and we good.
But if there will be low skillcap players, then let them come. Those who know how to fight will take a good care of them until they get discouraged or learn how to play.

All I see now is a rising population of casual guardians that were talking crap about DH few weeks ago that its a weak spec. Well, we are in a (no sarcasm) good spot right now.

By the way, spear pull and binding blades will keep you on toes while keeping your distance, so don’t feel that cheeky once you know that traps are laid.
Also, if we can’t pull you, we will come to you and drop dem sweet traps on your bootay right away

AivenPrimus.9184:

The problem is Devs doesnt realize that some players has multiple characters that they frequently play…
After all this isnt the first time they do something like this…

Now… can you stop doing it ANet and fix this?
400HP for elite spec is ridiculous…
Since players are left with 2 choices….
1. Grind boringly for map completion, then struggle to get 20 Jungle Challenges (where 80% are Mastery gated)
2. or do 100% completion of Jungle Challenges, … with that distance and few and far Waypoints

Suggestion is simple, reduce HP requirement down to 200.

So you can unlock about everything with just HP you already have back from Tyria ?
How about move your sweet bottom and do dem challanges, its an elite after all.
Show everyone that you are not a lazy bum and you can take a hard hit to the face
because of such demands, elite specs won’t feel elite at all.

We just have to deserve it.

Yes, I played for a bunch of hours and I am amazed with this new expansion. This is my first time I can participate in something as it just begins, I thought it might not be that nice and yet here I am, grinding through the jungle, exploring things and being utterly astonished by the good work you guys did !

Last but not least, a very important thing: DON’T YOU DARE NERF THE DIFFICULTY LEVEL OF PVE.

Players that were molded by years of soft core solo playing mmorpg’s now are breaking apart because they can’t handle what a true MMORPG’s are supposed to be: A grand festival of grinding and experiencing the true immersion and the great feeling of accomplishing something after hours of trying and improving.

Kevan.8912:

I’m sure that, when they’ll realize that if people wanted to play another wow clone, wow is still online… and players will just come back to it, so HoT will end losing both gw veterans AND wow-ers, we’ll see a manifesto 2.0 and another 180degrees change of direction.

And I won’t buy HoT or play gw2 until that moment

Going back to WoW is a good choice, if you can’t handle some real tough gameplay that takes more than mindless walkthrough to unlock everything.
They might leave ? Good… less weaklings to worry about.
This is what MMORGP is about: grind, grind and I forgot to mention of course GRIND !
The best of all ? I do not even play that much now as I used to. Job, social stuff etc… I bet I am not the only one that likes the hard long and seemingly boring grind. You don’t need to be an elitist no-life to handle it. Just slowly soak in and admire what you have.
Only the most pursuing and unyielding will deserve the elite specs and masteries.
If you can’t handle it then ask for help, aid others so that they might get to places they can’t. If you stay here and complain, then wait until it gets easier (doubt it) or look for other games.

Levi M.7428:

All I see on these forums is people complaining they can’t complete the whole expansion in a day…. I love the fact that I am going to have something to work towards in this game and that it’s not just going to be handed to me #silverspoon #nothappythenleave

I have to agree.
At first I also got a little bit discouraged that it was hard to get that glider at first but then I realised that we were all playing a convenient game that can be done in a few hours of quick grind. Now when we get some hard stuff hit right at our face, people do not want to adjust to long grind but cry and instead of pulling their crap together and grind that content, they waste their time on forums. It’s like WoW community all over again when they QQ’ed about hard PvE and now they just roll their faces through hardest levels of dungeons and raids. When I played Lineage II there was a quest for 3th tier of your class. As I remember it was a hugeeee gring fest to kill hundreds of mobs, I remember nothing of players complaining about that, they just simply rolled with it and only those who were the most unyielding, got what they deserved.
I consider myself decent, I do not approve of long boring grind, but if this is what I have to do to get my well deserved fun, then I’ll stand up to the challange and grab that HoT content by its horns and ride it to the top !

P.S.
Grinding even if it seems boring, is one of the cruicial aspects of MMORGP genre.
If you can’t handle a good old fashioned grind, then go play some soft core mmorpg’s

Go on, pour that sweet critique of yours on me but remember, make it worth your time, because you could actually spend it playing the game.

misterman.1530:

I pretty much only WvW. I have no idea what we are supposed to do in there. Nothing is explained (what are those levers for, ’cause I have no idea?). What masteries do I need in WvW (there are these weird platforms that seem like air or something might shoot out of them. What are these? Once again, I have no clue). If a game requires you to drop out and read pages and pages of a wiki article, scroll through forum posts, and peruse youtube videos, then the game is doing it wrong.

I have met with nothing BUT complaints in game. So, what does that prove? Nothing. Some people like it, some people hate it. The problem is this…if someone comes into these forums to get answers, what impression do you think they will get? There are tons of people complaining, and then there are those defending Anet – but many of them are condescending. Case in point “Oh I am so sorry, Anet should have implemented a child guide to new content because some of you find it so hard to figure things out on your freakin own ?!”

The more I read, the less I will play, and the less chance there is I will ever buy HoT.

If you really seek knowledge through hours of reading posts on forums and wiki, then good luck on ruining the experience for yourself.
I have only used wiki to read about lore from the first GW just to know what rolls in GW2 and read forums just out of curiosity and not to help myself with something I can’t do in the game.
All knowledge that I need I gain while playing the game and from other players. It’s just simple as that, you don’t have to read to know, just experience it.

Oh I am so sorry, Anet should have implemented a child guide to new content because some of you find it so hard to figure things out on your freakin own ?!
I have met with no complaints yet in my guild nor from people I met in the first zone.
I only Q_Q about pvp sometimes but this is PvE we are talking about here. Just take your time, this xpack is only 1 day old ~_~

I still don’t know about lots of thing in this xpack and this is freaking amazing !
When I see something new I go there and check it out on my own, perhaps with other players and we try to figure stuff out. This is the magic of new stuff, something like in Dark Souls, not much to guide you through a vast and hostile grounds of Maguuma Jungle but your own curiosity.

People nowadays want to get lots of stuff as soon as possible, hours after something is out.
What are you ? Elitists ? Yesterday I also came back from work and when I died many times like a lil’beach trying to get to some points or achieve them and when I finally did even though it wasn’t that much, in the end of the day I felt satisfied because I did a dangity dang good job to handle some stuff on my own instead of rolling with a mindless cluster of players to easily get stuff in a bunch of hours.
Most MMORPG’s now are easy to acquire certain things, take your time and enjoy the xpack while grinding the crap out of it. It’s a challange dang it !

I think RPG’s are meant to be played for a long time to slowly but with great quality, experience the content and to immerse with our characters instead of bull rushing through everything to later boast about how much hours in a row you spent to achieve a bunch of rare pixels

Or… how about take your time ? Make some strategies and tactics, think things through.
Please don’t be like WoW community that cries over some dumb stuff that needs to be nerfed just because they can’t do it right away after xpack is out. I know, I know some of you elitists just all dream of doing every possible piece of content in first few hours then boast about it like a drunk norn

I had a hard time with some points and zones (those darn vet frog shadowleapers are annoying) but as I learned some about mobs that are to be found in new zones I could figure stuff out on my own and solo most of the points.

I died a bunch of times and had a good laugh about it though
But seriously, the best part is that achievement point in a cave that is surrounded by poison. First time I went there I stopped because I knew something is off about it, it’s too obvious. I had about 3 random players running along with me and they just casualy walked into it one by one. Warrior tried to pop zerker stance and endure pain but not even invulnerabilities will make you immune to that poison, hilarious

I love HoT so far !

SlayerSixx.5763:

…poor damage? No aoe? Carefully consider how to kill veterans? Are you using a level 1 weapon in arah? I rolled around for an hour or two last night with just the longbow and new virtues and was literally crapping out damage like I just had a meal from taco bell.

Every attack you do with the LB is an aoe, brother. The auto bounces, 2 and 3 pierce, 4 and 5 are full on aoes. My true shot only lagged behind my WW by about 100 points of damage, but I didn’t mind much since I was chilling at a very comfortable 1200 range. I took on THREE veterans last night + about 2 normal mobs with DH, so I have 0 idea what you’re talking about.

If you’d like proof, I could gladly try my hand at soloing it if you’d like. Add me, I’ll be on in about 5 hours.

Say hello to Veteran Coztec Shadowleapers

Just like others said, Anet does not force anyone to play the meta, community does.

Sometimes it feels like a “Deus Ex Machina” – a random passive that saves you when things get dirty.
I play spvp regularly for a bunch of weeks now and I wonder how many and how cruicial passives there are on each classes.
Always when I use any form of CC I closely look at opponent’s avatar and seek for stability or any other kind of boons that won’t break my CC and yet without any block skills, any stab or smth, some classes still block/immune certain CC’s.
It’s not a QQ thread becuase it’s a minor thing, but still pretty annoying, especially on engineers but we can’t get mad at them as they take some grand balls to play at skillcap.

Do you guys think that there should be this kind of passives that you don’t know when they are up, that are not displayed as a boon ?

Shylock.4653:

SweetPotato.7456:

A team mate is downed, you rush in to help trying to interrupt the foe who is finishing off your teammate, you realized they are “invulnerable” or in “stealth” your teammate dies, and you can’t do a thing about it.

There are no 100% safe stomps:

http://qqmore.net/video-guide-countering-safestomps/

There might not be 100% safe stomps. But not everyone is capable to counter a safe stomp.

I find Spirit Weaps in PvE kind of nice, but just that.
If they didn’t die like a lil’bieatch to cleave and AoE, and if they had longer duration and cooldown that goes down along with summoning them, then it would be just okay to run it in all aspects of the game.

As a main guardian without passive MS trait I feel like standing next to a closed door and behind it there is a party where all other classes are invited.
It is really a bummer that we are forced to use staff or utilities and a traveler runes which is limiting our possibilities.
There are always people that don’t see it as a problem, there always are no matter the issue (even some say that thieves are fine the way they are #JustProThings).
But being the only class without MS might not be a big problem but at least an issue.
Can you imagine how it must be humiliating when you spvp and you get hunted down because you couldn’t outrun your enemies ? It’s not like you always have a sword TP or any other kind of movement skill off cooldown that will aid you on demand.
Guards may have sweet deeps, but we could have even more sweet deeps if we were not forced to use utility that strip us from making even more deeps combos, weapon that is not meant to damage (staff) or runes that won’t give us any nice procs.
Because we could either run fast through the field of battle to act quick but have it lil’ bit harder to fight and burst or we could hit harder but as we know it everyone will outrun us, catch us or we will miss the best bits of the fight as we get into it too late.
(exepction for bunker and supp guards, they don’t seem to mind.)
Well, I still do good as a power mediguard with traveler runes, but I wish I could boost myself even more.
Anyway, is it just me or guardian’s passives are not that breathtaking considering other classes ?

Fashion Mage.3712:

Now it’s about auto-winning unless your opponent has enough cleansing.

Bingo !

So here is a question:
Why can’t premades of at least 3 people get teamed against premades ?
I don’t think that long queues might be a problem here, it’s not like your or my premade is the only one in the whole exsistence (+ there are more prems in the evening).
For me it really takes away the challange when I encounter a team of solo que while being in a premade and in a swapped situaton.
Why couldn’t it be like premades as only ranked arena option ? Maybe game’s system could verify parties of players that at least 3 of them get marked as a premade team and thus they will face another team of 3 players and 2 solo ques.
We can handle the solo teams where one has a better set players and the other has weaker, but why premades have to be so frequently teamed against solo que ?

Wait wut ? But isn’t burn guard like about… not trying too hard to win ?
I’ve never known that there are any kind of special tactics besides stacking burn for few second kills and running around with team to not get into 1v1

Now that is something new that I didn’t know yet, thanks for the link.
Gotta get some more of that sweet lore.

It makes some of us wonder if there is any kind of lore behind our new specializations ?

From lore POV it feels kind of dull as we enter the Maguuma jungle and then “woah check it guys, I can now wield a longbow for some reason” and this kind of thing.
Elite specializations are one of the best things that are about to happen but don’t you guys think that it lacks some “kick” to it ?
What I mean is wouldn’t it be amazing to have a special kind of living story that is fitted to every each class (doesn’t have to be connected to HoT events) that explains how our new found powers came to be ?
What was the inspiration to gain what we are about to receive along with HoT release.
For example:
Warriors went to hone their skills after defeat of Zhaitan, in the mountains (good old karate kid style) or smth about that and (ate some shrooms – cause real berserkers were on shrooms as well, bro) met someone or something that helped them to better understand the primal need to hunt/fight like an animal. So they make a campfire then somehow get caught on fire and then they angrily punch bears with bare hands while trying to find some water to extinguish themselves.

It’s just a rough idea just to show you what I mean.

Now the second part of this thread which probably was featured for quite a bunch of times but well, it got lost in the bowels of this forum so I’d like to refresh it (it’s not like it’s going to harm anyone).

As I read lore about monks, paragons and guardians (which is still kind of thin as I’ve just begun) now I start to wonder. From where does it really come from ?
Yes, it comes from faith itself, faith into warband, alchemy, spirits of the wild, human gods and caesar salad or channeled through bloodstones etc…
It’s a game mechanic that all races have access to all professions cause bloodstones grants us powers that do not choose between races or ideologies.
Guardian’s power originates from one of the four aspects of magic: preservance.
It was that kind that monks and paragons used and that got merged into one name of our beloved blue class.
So yeah, I kind of explained it to myself right ? Well not exactly.
Let’s put our tinfoil hats upon our heads and let’s get weird.

Let’s not look at game’s mechanic of “all races all profs” but first…
What is light ?
This is my theory which may be wrong as I do not know everything yet but let me have some fun, k ?
Mesmers use light in its physical nature as they could use magic to bend it and create Illusions.
Guardians use light as well BUT ! This is not a physical but spiritual light.
With paladin/crusader/templar/guardian archetype we imagine light and its ideology as a pure and simple font of power that heals true and strikes true. It’s like a feeling of radiance of a dawning sun that gracefuly descends upon, giving you the sweet feeling of safety, tranquil mind… or brings excruciating torment and purging flames to punish you (depends if you are with a guard or against guard ).
This is how we think of this kind of light, it’s not a sheer power that is stored withing our muscles, it’s not physical, it does not feel like a force of nature nor arcane.
It is divine.
If we, guardians use our power that is seen as faith, why isn’t it depicted as something that is specific to our race’s culture and beliefs but manifested as a light of divine aspect in all of us?
It feels like humans, norn, asuras (asurans ?), charr and sylvari (well plant people are kind of a mystery as they are dragon minions but let’s keep going)
we all have the same understanding of faith, as pure and simple, humble feeling of safety when being close to our loved ones, to those we crave to protect and places we belong to that we wish to defend.
It’s like there is something more than just human gods, eternal alchemy and celestial spirits/spirits of the wild. It doesn’t necessarily have to be an entity because it feels like a concept we all know of in real life and we don’t have to be limited by just that one thought. But then, are human gods only and just for humans ? It is said that paragons taught everyone about gods’ ways and how to tap into preservation to power their own faith.
The question remains: Why every race guardian’s abilities are of divine, holy nature ?

tinfoil hat mode off

I know that it’s a game mechanic that we all have the same abilities and stuff but let’s get creative and look at it from lore point of view.
Also If I made some cruicial story mistakes, please let me know (I bet you will anyway).

“In the Light, we are one.”
- Maraad (Draenei paladin featured in World of Warcraft)

I am here for somewhere about 3-4 months so I am a child like some like to call.
I don’t know exactly how it was during “good old days”.
Your observations are correct indeed and from what I read and hear from other veteran uncles and aunts is that passives are indeed tricky stuff that for some classes give just too many opportunities.
I also find this annoying how I can’t predict if someone has some passive on or off cooldown like ranger’s shared anguish.

Feral druids… nuff said.

I’ve spent some quality time back in the days playing almost every class in pvp and my fav was a pally.
It is without doubt that GW2 combat is superior, it shouldn’t even be compared in the first place as it is a completely new level.
Thus I find it funny how people complain about GW2 being unbalanced in PvP. It might be for some but for me it’s much better and I don’t care that much about certain unbalances as you can do more about it with dodges and positioning than in WoW.

15% more damage on GS up from 5% and 150 heal on every GS swing.
Virtue of Justice active should do AoE blind and single target blast for a significant ammount of burst damage.
If not then why ? Could that be OP somehow ?

As I said once, there is already at least one person that is skill capped with each of elite specs #justinbornperceptionthings
This indeed brings joy to my heart that DH is capable of such amazing things now.
But I have a strange feeling like some of those enemies were plain silly at certain moments.

As we know, when we go invicible we drop the orb, but is it really necessary for damage immunity like endure pain or ranger’s signet to be allowed to use and not drop the orb ?
I am not sure as I haven’t noticed if orb drops at such circumstance but some classes pop their immunity plus stab so they are practically invincible but with two abilities and If I am not wrong they are still capable of holding the orb.
Is this intended and if it is then should this really be a thing ?

With what stats and against who you deal up to 10k damage with True Shot and under what circumstances (boons, conditions etc…)

Kjeldoran.3849:

In my opinion these aoe buffs should be toned down accordingly to their effectivenes and here is how:

“+150 toughness”: is a good chunk of damage reduction if built with 0 toughness but very low if already tanky

“+150 power”: is a good ammount, not very much, not too few

“+150 ferocity”: here we have too much of a stat which reaches “+10% damage on crits” which is huge anyway (and not situational like toughness) so maybe tone it down to 100?

“+150 precision”: is another huge boost (is it 7% crit chance), I think it should be like 120 max…

talking about strength in number I think that the best way to improve it and make it really a worty choice is to change it into a “static damage reduction” rather than toughness boost (which isn’t static) something like a passive 5-7% damage reduction (if I’m correct 33 toughness = 1% damage reduction with 0 toughness)

Now, now let’s not get hasty and greedy with all these better passive traits, remember that we have to stay in our good spot becuase it will be greatly unfair that we might get some better passives and people will QQ about OP guardians. It’s not our stick bro, best passives belong to others. /Kappa

Please… stop crying or we will have a flood.
Traps are only bad in 1v1, if you have it harder elsewhere, then that’s too bad.
Seriously during team fights you put a bunch of traps while everyone is distracted and BOOM, done. When you are focused during a 1v1 fight then it gets a little bit underwhelming but we can’t get out of our good spot, we can’t be too good you know

It is fine indeed but I really Q_Q after I pop contemplation of purity and get 10 boons while after 2-3 seconds I get refreshed on a wide variety of conditions again. It has quite a cooldown even if traited, it’s a stun breaker and rerolls all condits into boons.
It would make it OP but if CoP had 5 seconds of condition reflect then I and other mediguards would be happy

Yesterday I fought a trap DH on stronghold, I run power medi and that guard did an amazing job or was just lucky to plant traps in a good spot (pun intended).
If DH is the one who is not being focused at, he can drop lots of traps before you see it or you will be distracted while in combat, then traps might be quite hard.
So traps are bad and they are also good, depends on when and where you use them. I once walked on 4 traps and it damaged me greatly from 17k to few hundred so if you see a tight entrance and a DH on the other side then u gotta dodge or teleport to them instead of being so reckless as I was

In the end of the day DH looks like a double edged sword, if you walk in at least two stacked traps you might be done, if you manage to outkite DH and melee him away from his traps, he is pretty much done as well.

Traps like purfication and fragments of faith could be remotely activated for own benefit instead of trying to lure our enemies who clearly anticipate that there is a trap and we don’t have that many abilities that will alter our opponent’s positioning to force them to enter our trap (though I once saw a guardian who banished someone into dragon’s maw and that was hilarious).
It will be mega obvious once guard goes low on HP and pops purification, all you have to do is switch to anything ranged and just finish him off cause he won’t heal for the whole ammount, thus purification is not welcome in PvP and WvW. It is a nice idea but sadly it’s also just another wasted healing utility that will gather dust along with others except shelter.

I wonder for what reason guardian hammer got so butchered in the first place ?
I thought that hammer and greatsword is 50/50 but GS is far more superior and has a better trait (which could use a tiny buff as well).

Mercurias, you are right in most of those fixes but I’ll just stick to spirit weapon part.
Our spirit weapons could be better if worked like minions and if not then SW cooldown should begin counting once we pop those weaps so that we won’t wait that long after they DIE LIKE A LIL’ BANANA ! Srsly, it just takes few flimsy hits or random AoEs to destroy those. I tried hammer cause it was really nice with that knockback-fest but before I could do some nice combos it just died off in the heat of battle. If those have to stay vulnerable like that, they could at least be invulnerable to AoE attacks and cleave damage, only target damage should work on them and perhaps 90% cooldown reduction when our weapon gets destroyed before it’s 50% duration time.
If not, then why… too much OP and it would make us get out of our comfortable “good spot” ?

It might seem like a madman’s dream but it just came to me while I was QQ-ing on guard forum.
This game has a great sense of character immersion due to our own story line, doing combos and being able to dodge.
What if… instead of making builds with 3 specs that are strictly described, how it would look like if we had all our traits to be able to mix with each other and literally build our very own specializations ? It seems like a really and I mean REALLY big business and it would alter the very build mechanic of our characters that would drive us to many OP builds. Besides, Anet could think of it as a trash idea for certain reasons they see as obvious, perhaps they might think of it as too much work.
But let’s theorycraft here:

Let’s say we get one trait line on one side and all our profession’s traits on the other.
one singular trait line that consists of 36 trait slots. Then our traits of all 5 (soon 6) specializations should be nicely sorted to match their level (minor, major, adept, master, grandmaster). Then the real building begins so that we drag all those traits that we want, we make our very own trait combos that will best, and I mean BEST fit our playstyle.

You will say that some traits won’t be used at all (but hey, do we use them on our current spec mechanic too ? I don’t think so). There are some of those that are redundant to our playstyle and we waste whole spec slot just to get that one or two traits that are cruical to our build, and this is how that trait building mechanic could help us take the best bits of our specs, or those bits that best work out for us to create amazing OP builds.

Well now, pour some hot oil, don’t hesitate to give your opinion (but don’t be borderline kittened to just insult).

The trippy stuff here is that if we wish to use virtues like other classes do with their F’s then we are FORCED to go with virtues spec which kind of sucks bwalls for those who use greatsword and meditations/shouts
If spirit weapons didn’t die like a lil’beach from a few flimsy AoE attacks and were really powerful as well as consecrations didn’t have such long cooldowns even with trait, then it could work out to move out of meditations or shouts to something else while using DH spec. But as someone said on one of the recent threads on guard forum that it will be hard to make more valid builds due to only shouts and meditations being best utilities as cons, spiritw and signets are really useless in almost every encounter.

By the meaning of “physical aspect” we think of weapon-like skills that are meant to be used frequent rather than ocassional enahncements like regular virtues. Well of course we could use renewed focus but such ability feels kind of weird to use on already altered virtues.
If we sacrifice a spec to get a new one that changes the way of how virtues work then why can’t it also grant us much lower cooldowns to really make it feel like physical aspect that is enjoyable to use frequently (In that case if we somehow had low cooldowns, renewed focus would not refresh those virtues but refresh abilities that are on 30 sec CD and up.
And seriously, make traps work on downed enemies.
Purificiation has nice heals on short CD if traited but since almost everyone can go into ranged swap and we know that if we don’t have healing trap laid somewhere then it’s really predictable that we are about to drop it once we get low on hp. Your enemy doesn’t have to be a rocket scientist to swap to ranged and finish you off once you drop your trap and watch yourself die like a scrub. If we are to use that trap, it should really be worth it to sacrifice shelter or in some cases LoW. Thus it would be really helpful if we could trigger purification trap remotely by using the skill once again 5 seconds after it got deployed, or perhaps walking over it by ourselves plus it works on 1200 yard range (remote activation).

P.S.
We can’t have everything but why during using wings of resolve we can’t be evading stuff ? It’s a bummer that when we use it to heal we don’t get any condi cleanse (we are forced to go virtues here) and we are still vulnerable to being shot down like a bird during the flight. What, does it seem too much OP by any chance ?

on GW2 wiki it says that hammer does high damage, just like GS.
Well, mighty blow is rather unmighty. It has a spectacular animation and all but it’s just borderline weak in terms of damage and auto attack speed and damage is like our guardian picked up warrior’s hammer that seemed to be a little bit too heavy.
Now with new DH spec if someone wishes for going meditation as well as to keep low cooldown on virtues and pick up melee trait, then hammer is best pick but that weapon is for those who really like to challange themselves.

DH feels much better now but it’s not top quality yet. I wonder what could improve traps, perhaps if they could also activate on downed enemies ?
And could we get heavy light to be merged with deflecting shot, it even has the same cooldown. It is really a bummer to have random knockbacks so we can’t plan on doing timed gaps between us and our opponent.
It is quite sad that some of us who run meditation trait and that wish to go with DH spec too for better melee swap will have to sacrifice either Zeal or Virtues (GS trait or lower virtue cooldowns). Well it is possible to play without certain weapon traits but it feels dull and a little bit more challenging. So if we run DH and want to use meditations to do some hard melee dps with traits, then ranged/melee damaging hybrid might not work out. This makes me sad T^T, but I do get that we can’t have all that so we gotta do what we have to do.