Before that balance update elementalists were like noblemen that were wearing warm clothing during harsh winter and had everything at their disposal at once.
Then Mr. Balance came and took your stuff.
You are viable, at least you have nice traits (not like guard), you just have to find a new way and adapt.
P.S.
As for mesmer’s alacrity nerf, (I am pleased as well cause I do not like mesmers).
33% is a bit of a hit in the balls. I guess 45% of alacrity would hit the spot, not too much and not too little.
It’s been quite a while, spoilers are bound to happen. It is hard but it is true, who played HoT story until now, is save. Those who didn’t well… gotta deal with it, it’s not like everyone is gonna stay put and quiet just beacuse a some people didn’t get HoT or didn’t finish their story.
On the other hand a little [HoT Spoiler] in this thread is advised.
A hammer has so much more character than a greatsword!
Wielding a hammer as a Guardian feels like stepping forward, calmly telling your party you’ve got this, and watching enemies grow desperate as they know they’ll surely have a hard time getting past this wall of fortified magic and steel forged in the flames of justice!
You got me right there bro.
This is what guardian lacks, which is intimidation (besides DH which is kind of no more aw well due to trap nerf). People do not fear us but underestimate us when wielding a hammer.
Sometimes I can pull off some sweet CC combos that allow me to easily dispose of certain enemies, but this takes way too much effort and is very risky (compared to what others can do with like one or two button mashes) and my adversary must be on lower or same combat capability level playing a non-meta build.
Anyway… first balance update is live so we should reactivate our threads along with meta thread and hope that some devs see this and note that down that guardians desire hammer changes.
Dunno if this ever might get changed but this truly hurts eyes to see how mace part of the weapons is sticking over character’s head…
Like, what is that? A Tumor of some kind ?
There are some really sweet skins like Genesis but it pains to wear it as it weirdly placed while stowed on character’s back… yet its dark counterpart, Entropy is somehow better adjusted and is placed quite reasonably.
I guess it might be a clipping problem if we had an adjustement option on how our weapons could get stowed behind our back, but lots of hammers really look silly when the mace part is far away from the head or is placed higher than character’s head.
This is just my personal experience throughout HoT pvp
Before HoT I didn’t encountered such uphills like now but that meditation ability against certain condi builds (especially necro) is almost like a death wish.
This ability has quite a cooldown even with trait, it is supposed to be an ace during condi fights but well, as before HoT I felt condis fueled mediguard, now it is kind of meh.
Considering that necro gets even more corrupt in few days, some of us might have a bad time with that new amulet mixing power/condi. (And if someone says that hybrids like that are not effective then remember the Cele Ele :P).
During certain fights I find myself in a tight spot of necro wells, “well” it isn’t such a problem due to CoP but 1 or 2 seconds after converting condi > boon, I get a wide variety of boons converted into condi once again. Due to those damaging over time effects the heal from medi is almost irrelevant.
It makes my wonder why counter to conditions… has a counter as well.
Of course it’s not common because only necros can do this (and revs too, I guess ? I can’t quite tell). But even without boon corrupt this ability feels kind of underwhelming due to how conditions are easy to apply/refresh and CoP has that long cooldown.
I’d rather have 24 seconds but convert 3 boons and if boon gets stripped or converted, then they get transfered back to the enemy? (Welp, that second utility is just a dream :P).
When I hear “paladin” I can’t think of anything else than a big kitten hammer but well…
Elite specializations are kind of hard to believe that there will be new sets of those every single expansion pack.
How about instead of elite specialization, we could get some new weapons ?
There were a bit of threads like these, threads that might not have been very popular but they met with positive opinions about adding something new to our armory.
The first thoughts that came to my mind were: Battle axe OR polearm (second one is already included in the game’s data for quite a long time): Weapons that are well known to us and could be used by all soldier classes.
Crossbow: This fits the theme of thief, ranger and even engineer (Engie could have his crossbow to work like a tough siege crossbow perhaps with something extra to it like a tower shield that comes as some sort of an active skill in one of crossbow’s weapon slots like #5).
Scythe OR power gauntlets/bracelets: For scholars. The second option came to my mind just now, dunno why but some kind of a bracelet or gauntlet that enhances power sounds kind of neat because using magic with just our hands instead of scepters/focuses/staves seems to be quite awesome.
I would prefer if there was a ‘smart’ way to apply Aegis but i don’t think stacking it is the answer; it’s way too easily abused that way.
Personally, I would like to see changed to absorb a certain amount of damage instead of a single hit. That way it’s not so easily wiped away by clever players.
Yeah, that hits the spot.
An Aegis that absorbs damage instead of getting popped by a random AA.
But the question indeed remains:
What kind of damage, both power and condi ?
If it comes to scaling I guess it might scale off of the highest stat so that every guardian could get absorption.
Like hey… let’s say this one looks kind of sweet.
I have a tough time in finding a good heavy headpiece that covers whole face or has a shadow effect to it without having any kind of massive horns, wings and all that extra fabulous stuff (it’s not always bad).
I thought that vigil helmet might hit the spot but naaah.
I guess If we hit Jormag’s expansion there might be some new armor pieces.
Or perhaps add an option to certain head pieces to make us able to put an additional shadow effect to hide our faces (not always due to them being ugly).
Perhaps something like this. But what about if aegis had two parts:
First one soaks in any damage that hits be it auto attack, direct skill or AoE
Then aegis “shatters” and second barrier stays up to soak in first critical hit before dispersion.
That could work as guardian only capability to aegis.
I had a thought of a certain skill mechanic for guardian if there will be any new elite specializations.
A special kind of aegis that soaks in all damage for a few seconds before blowing out in an AoE attack which deals the same ammount of damage that was held on that barrier or is divided among targets (up to 5).
Hammer has to get a buff, nuff said.
It is a must for ward to cast during movement.
If AA 3rd won’t get faster then at least make protection stack so we can keep it for about 80-90% of the time while using the AA chain.
3th and 4th ability should either get a lower cooldown (4th) or damage increase to be a part of dps rotation.
Mighty blow feels unmighty a bit, perhaps MB should have something extra to it ?
Hope and faith are what keeps guardian’s up and running
Perhaps we didn’t call out long enough for devs to really take note on hammer to revamp it.
Let us see what this balance update brings and if needed, we shall continue this thread as long as it takes.
Ele with celestial – too strong
Ele without celestial – too weak
How to live ?
So ele has to stay a jack of all trades and fulfill every role as they see fit ?
Don’t give me the excuse that they can’t master all of them because even if they can’t be OP at something with one, with 4 attunements at a time (or which ele use the most) they get a strong standing ground mixing all those abilities which are both boosted by traits and celestial stats.
(Sometimes it feels like the very concept of elementalist is OP but what do I know?)
P.S.
Guardian’s hammer should get a good touch as well.
The balance update will arrive shortly and it is said that traps will get a nerf (Don’t mind it and im kind of glad). But they also said that guardian will have traits and abilities both updated. Do you think they might also touch some of our weapons ?
Though they mentioned weapons in other classes, I really hope that hammer might get a tweak as well as it is clearly a weapon that is used rarely in both pvp and pve
Legit duels anywhere in the world that require an agreement from both players for fun. But if one decides to initiate a fight without other player choosing the positive option, then the first one gets flagged.
If such player manages to kill his prey, then that murderer gets a whole instance (zone) focus for about 10 seconds and then he can be tracked down. If the one who defends himself manages to defeat the one who wanted to kill him, he gets some long term boons and perhaps a bit of silver. While the bested rogue loses a bit of his cash and gets long term conditions.
If PK wishes to redeem himself, he has to kill a fair ammount of mobs, but to make things more intense, the PK status weakens damage to mobs so it takes a bit more time to kill them. Second option might be hunting down another Player Killer.
If the killer gets hunted down and defeated, the hunter/s is/are granted a boon to exp and money/karma gained from mobs and hearts/events. While the outlaw gets a condition that lowers these things mentioned before.
Of course such player can’t leave the map and if he leaves the game (dc, log out, power outage, mom calls for dinner) the PK status shall remain.
This might be intense like really, really instense. Just think of the adrenaline rush
You are right, adding new weapon means a lot of work on balance, just like with elite specializations.
Now bear in mind that a new weapon is much less work as it only stands for adding 5/3/2 skills (depends on weapon type) and perhaps a trait or merging some traits to add 20% cooldown reduction and something extra to it.
The real problem is envy which means that battle axe might never be wielded by certain classes, so in that case every class should get some sort of a new weapon.
I call battle axes for soldier type classes for sure!
By the power of BUMP
I call upon this thread to ascend because reasons.
I see that there might be staves that look like polearms (Lightward and Reclaimed) so if somone wishes to fight like that, then such person has to play revenant or daredevil. It looks like we won’t have any polearms.
But a battle axe is something different so I vote: YES
If you are satisfied with hammer you clearly haven’t used Revenant, Engineer or Warriors hammer.
Yup, even warrior’s hammer is far superior.
I tried scrapper, never played engineer before and I ate everything in both PvE and PvP now I have a hard time to decide which to play more, I like guardian due to lore but hammer is kinda underwhelming.
Have you ever wished for your character to stand idle in a fancy pose like being chill hangin’ on your sword or doing some tricks with their weapons or just with themselves instead of what we have now ?
Personally I like the idle animation on two handed sword how our characters weight it in their arms, such as some other stuff that happens, yet it feels a little bit too less.
It’s a shame we can’t /flex or do a bunch of poses for our sweet screencaps.
I bet that it would be a kind of a big deal to at least put a set of emotes and idle animations to make our characters more immersive with the world while we do other stuff or just need to look nice to make a screencap.
Yeh, I do realise that it takes time to take care of clipping issues and make lots of new different animations for some drawn out weapons or for new emote actions for our characters, but if those things were to be aquired through gem store, wouldn’t you like to have it to make your main/alt feel buff and strong, more relevant in the world standing at the top of a pile of fallen enemies while leaning on your staff/sword/hammer lookin all tough and mighty
P.S.
Why norn males (perhaps some other races too) can’t keep hammers and 2handed swords on their shoulders while walking just like some other races do ?
Welp, it isn’t THAT bad.
The medi hambow build I use now is great for lots of CC and weak-decent close combat capabilities but it is still crappy compared to most classes.
There are hammer guardians for sure that run PvE/P, WvW but mostly due to that they like hammer as a weapon for roleplay or just to fool around instead of being truly serious (there is always someone who is).
I gave up ranked matches because I also don’t like the meta and I don’t find it amusing getting ripped to shreds. Yet playing unranked matches on non-meta build is still lots of fun. Though when I tried scrapper power build it was so fun to run around with that hammer that I almost cried why Anet abandoned guardians and gave improved spirit weapons (gyros) to engineers.
It feels like we got DH just out of mercy because every other class got an elite spec
Anyway, we have to wait until devs return from their slumber, do a bunch of fixes and maybe in few months we might get a chance of any updates to guardian as a whole so we can get out of our wretched “good spot”.
I don’t know much how to use reddit but I am eager to learn… too bad I can’t sing up for some reason as when I try to finish up the registration process by pushing “sign up”, it doesn’t do anything.
I wish we could mix certain headgear items that would look rather normal like a helmet and glowing eyes mask.
Wouldn’t it look awesome to have a blue/red/green glow coming out of your headpiece ?
Engie is a walking multi tool that people claim to be hard to play (which is a load of crap by the way).
Unless guardians get such proficiency like engie has, we will always stay on a “good spot” or lower (like now).
For now devs are chillin’ on their holidays so we won’t get any responses or Karl might not even check our feedbacks here anytime soon.
P.S.
We will never get such capabilities like elementalist and engineer due to “class diversity” which has to be maintained.
Oh wait… revenants aquired such versatility.
Hair accessories and norn body paint should have some more dyes for sure.
I wish there was a special dye for norn that would make their symbols glow but oh well, sylvari are glowy for now.
An equally skilled reaper will DESTROY you 1v1. Do not bother trying to hold a cap vs a necro. You will die in about 10 seconds,
People suggesting stuff in this thread are either amber division or simply never pvped once the expansion hit. The reaper right now is probably the strongest duelist up there with chronos, revs and druids.
Guardian is trash tier in both spvp and pve currently. On my reaper with less than 30h into it I crush guards without breaking a sweat. The easiest match up right now.
I would strongly suggest you not to bother with this class and try something else
Huh… here I must agree. During beta I loved to fight reapers as a mediguard becuase ppl didn’t run away and didn’t know how to play a reaper properly but now classic mediguard gets butt-stabbed all the way if it goes into 1v1 without any intervention from other players before and during a fight.
This is why that custom build of mine is quite effective against reapers due to huge ammount of CC and longbow damage peeling them and forcing to waste their shroud before it is fully charged. But it is only worth it if you aggresively initiate the fight because otherwise the reaper gains advantage.
I have tons of fun fighting those predictable necros that pop shroud at 1% hp becuase spear pull interrupts that but it is like almost sheer luck to pull (pun intended) this out.
Yep spear/polearm and well… any kind of weapon that is attached to a long stick should be a weapon of choice used on land.
Dang it our ancestors used such arms because it was the most efficient weapon through centuries.
We dunno lore-wise what happened to paragons and dervish due to human gods going “kthxbai”. But if spear makes it into a throwing variant instead (or also) of good ol’ swing and stab, then I bet that some people might be a little dissapointed.
It really makes me think, why spears were thrown into water… guardians, wardens, warriors… it’s such an obvious weapon to use just like a two handed sword.
Let’s get realistic becuase it was claimed few years back that polearms were created but didn’t make it into the final cut, yet they still hang in there on the board waiting for their glorious time to come.
If we plead enough, this time might come sooner but devs have to know that we want something like that to be a part of new content that is to come in the future.
worst:
any meta engineer spec from release to now.
having to watch one or play against one is nothing but boring and always has been. passive defenses for years, obscene amount of low-counterplay CC (slickshoes is still one of the cheapest skills in the game), the worst steal skill in the game, etc.
I’ve never had any respect for engineer players because of how easy it is, especially now with scrapper in the mix; it has a laughable risk factor since the profession practically plays itself in most instances. whether if it was the turret build which literally played itself (and something everyone was happy to see go) or now scrapper which a wood log on a keyboard could play competently, engineer has always represented “the easy way” to success.
The best: power thief, warrior, mesmer, ranger (pre-spec update), necro, ele
pretty much anything power damage oriented with higher risks has always been fun to play and watch. that being said, DPS guardian does not fall into this category because it’s not high risk in the slightest and never has been. Burn guard was 100x more fun to play against than power guard/DH because it was high risk. Druid can’t make this list either because it’s power variant is still sleazy as can be with drastic oversustain and overrewarding AI.
I have to disagree with you, kind sir.
It is known here and there and everywhere that damage over time effects require much less direct contribution (thus less skill) in fighting a certain enemy.
Considering that burn can be pretty much reapplied fairly quickly, it does not make a big deal to play burnguard (played it, and I know what I am saying).
Now power mediguard is best described by metabattle “true risk/reward”
It has mobility, great damage but is squishy as dang but the true skill in mediguard is how we sustain ourselves and rotate to defeat our opponents.
This build has to be more active to survive because mediguard is not carried by sustaining passives but by meditation skills that take a direct approach to use and a well perceiving player.
While as any condi build all you have to do is tease someone a bit to force him to use his condi cleanse and then go crazy with all you got or ambush your foes, drop everything you got and CC the living crap out of them before they manage to cleanse.
If you manage at that, then you just can /laugh and run around watching as everyone dies.
P.S.
Yet I agree about engineer, it’s a lie what people say about it being hard to play.
More capabilities and skills means more counterplay + passives 24/7
If you want to say it is not true then I’d like to mention that just to prove this right I made my own engineer (later scrapper) and played a fair ammount of matches to taste every kind of enemy from newbies to pros and as I said somewhere else before:
From my personal experience playing as a classic mediguard few months before HoT, I found necros to be one of the most enjoyable enemies to fight.
1. It is good to peel them a bit from the distance with scepter before going in melee
2. If they pop shroud, kite it around the corners and save smite condi and other stunbreaks for when you get feared.
3. Mediguard is squishy but our meditations heal us + with smiter’s boon we deal extra damage on using smite condi and heal as a part of dps rotation.
(Now I run hambow mediguard and instead of purification/shelter I run LoW due to damage from trueshot and AoE from hammer stacking for some sweet heals).
So medig vs necro is a 50/50 due to our squishiness but necro with all those condi, fuels our abilities to do more damage and give us boons (CoP spell).
4. Stay away from their staff AoE cause it hurts yo nuts pretty hard.
5. It is good to cast binding blade right before teleporting to them as you get a clear CC when opening on them in melee (if timed right, you can prevent necro from using shroud when he is low on health).
This idea came to me when I saw Priory scholars that were using hammers but they had robes on them, like a good ol’ fashioned cleric archetype.
This might seem silly to see a warrior running in robes though but we already have silly stuff in gem-store and you can run around in pink dyed armor, I didn’t hear any complaints about that.
If we could make this thread to be more relevant then we might have hope for something like that somewhere in the future if devs will approve it.
Huh, I didn’t think that there will be so much approval to this idea.
I don’t really expect such idea to ever get implemented but well… hope dies last.
There is much potential and we would distinguish yourselves even more.
There is certainly some reasons why this isn’t a thing because it could have been implemented long ago but hey, let’s bring this up because curiosity.
Don’t you guys ever wished to mix up armor types to make even more fancy custom armor sets ?
(The lack of normal hoods – which is without any glow and stuff, on heavy armor is sad, at least for me.)
Like there is that sweet light armour shoulder skin that would gloriously match up with some of medium armor or heavy armor skins ?
I guess that would hit the gem store quite hard but then… why not throw in, let’s say 50 or 100 gem worth special transmutation stones that can be aquired only through gems and which could transmute other kinds of armor types with each other ?
Yeh, warrior is quite nice. They do lots of damage but in pvp they are borderline weak due to lack of sustain other than endure pain and weak regen signet.
Even if you make a glasscannon, in this bunker’ish meta you won’t be able to do anthing as you will get your kitten CC’ed so hard that not even 10 stacks of stability will save you.
In PvE though, it is quite fun because mobs just stand there and take crits to the face
You can still go with meditrap like everyone else (tip: in PvE and WvW you can drop traps and then switch to other utilities and traps will still be left on the ground so you can make some advantage points for yourself before encountering mobs/foes).
I play my guardian just because I love the concept of guardian/paladin/templar you name it, also for roleplay reasons. But our profession in current meta (both PvP and PvE) is outmatched by clearly every other profession that does stuff we do but 2x better, more or just way easier and you need to be rather experienced to be on par with everyone else, though it is still quite a chunk to handle.
Retaliatory Subconscious is on a 30s cd. Personally I think that attempting to weigh just these traits across classes is too myopic to be meaningful.
You guys stay away from guardian traits, these are bad just as they are.
All you have to do is sneeze on guard after CC and block goes down anyway. I would rather trade aegis for 5 secs of protection
I know, right? Terrific…
Yet I still keep on grinding the bones of my foes with that sweet hambow build because I am a man that likes to throw obstacles on my own road to victory, but dang it the satisfaction after you beat someone with non-meta build.
I wish I could see the reaction of all those fancy meta players that end up wrecked under borderline weak guardian’s hammer.
It takes much patience but once you roll it fine then the fun after beating someone is unimaginable.
(Mighty blow should deal much more damage tbh).
DH gets boring so fast, thats why I switched to Scrapper. They are soo fun.
Tell you what ? I main guard for about half a year now and I just gave a slight taste to a bunch of other profs. When I fought scrappers I thought that they are dang skilled due to everyone claiming that it takes lots of perception and button mashing… I’ve never been so wrong.
I rolled my own Scrapp-hurr and all I had to do is just smack that hammer randomly at anything with just a little effort to time a few skills like Whirl on ranged attacks and this kind of thing.
The synergy between traits, 24/7 passives and “unintended” support to other team mates by just smacking everything around.
People claim that the more buttons you have, the harder it gets… I call bull feces cause the more abilities you have, the more opportunities and counter measures you get during a fight. Tis’ a blessing (in short).
Same with elementalist but I do not say that it is unskilled because to play certain classes and builds to its full extent it really takes a bunch of experience and combo building but hey… if you have the capability to do something by pressing a few buttons then there is nothing hard besides learning and honing your skill and perception.
I recall that one time when I fought on ranked with a scrapper as I was on my DH (hambow mediguard – doing quite amazing due to lots of CC). I had a hard time and gave a hard time as well but eventually I was bested.
When I got into my scrapp-hurr, my and that other engineer’s paths were crossed once again.
I thought he was indeed skilled but when I out-gimmicked him with my own play with scrapper, it was just a matter of time before he fell defeated.
I played a fair ammount of matches to encounter all kinds of enemies, solo/duo/premade, skilled/unskilled and I hereby proclaim that playing engineer is not a big deal.
In the end of they day, it is guardian who should fart our boons as well as elementalist/engineer/revenant because this is the very essence of our being to fight and support in the same time.
(Weak kitten shouts are out of the meta – this i’d like to mention)
Because DH doesn’t have much to offer, its straight tactic is truly easy to see through.
Yep, if I am not wrong then guardian is one of the first classes that were implemented into this game and the more I play it and while I study other classes’ traits and skills, the more I think that our core guardian and his weapons were just a test that got stuck in the past.
Though ranger was even earlier unveiled and still has better trait combinations and synergy -_-
I hope so becuase game that has torches/focuses/scepters that are surely not a default choice of arms in other games, should truly put in a bit of more real weapons.
(Fun-fact: spears and later polearms were the most common weapons since the dawn of mankind and first civilizations).
