Guild Wars 2

Yeh, but in another thing it would suck due to only few classes gaining access to this weapon. If such thing was ever to be put in game then it would be reasonable to do so with a whole new expansion throwing in bunch of different new weapons as well, so that every class gets some, for example:
Polearms/halberds for soldier classes
Fist weapons for adventurer classes
Spell tomes (or some other kind of magical miscallenous) for scholar classes.

Of course it’s just a raw thought.

When I first launched GW2, first thing I was gonna do is to equip myself with a two handed axe or a polearm… welp, that was unexpected when I saw polearms to be an underwater weapon and axes are only in one handed variant.

I highly doubt that Anet will ever implement both of these due to balance issues, but there is a slight chance that those might get merged into a halberd (as you know it: part axe, part polearm).
Let’s say warriors get a more axe-“ish” (brutal) aspect and guardians polearm-“ish” (defensive/distant) of such weapon.
Of course Revenant might try it as well and strangely I think that rangers might get it due to hunters being profecient with spears/polearms in their hunts (not from WoW point of view).

P.S.
Yay, bumping old threads !
If this gets much more attention then we might hope for next expansion to include new weapons instead of elite specializations (it could cover the part of our character’s evolving more and more as we drill deeper into the dragon menace).

Jolly good, thank you for the gifts !

We all wish for something and Wintersday is upon us.
I don’t know if I deserve something as I just play this game for its gameplay and lore for about half a year, I did things here and there but it isn’t that much though.

Dear Santa
I would be really happy for a bunch of… well… anything.
Thank you, cheers.

I know this isn’t the thread but I dunno if you see it or no…
Glint’s Gaze Mask back to the gem store, pretty please ?
Some people (including myself) would really appreciate that item to return to the gem store.

Heck.4231:

Any chance for a re-release of Glint’s Gaze Mask, I have been dieing to complete my mask collection for a while, and since I unlocked herald it looks amazing with the new Mistward armor set.

Yes, I have talked with a bunch of people today in the mists and we all agreed that Glint’s Gaze Mask should definitely return to the gem store at least for Christmas.
I does not even have to be cheaper, I already got the required ammount of gems for that sweet piece of headgear equipement!

We would deeply appreciative if GGM find its place once again in the gem store.

Well, we would definitely like to see a huge list of nerfs but let’s not get too hasty.
I honestly didn’t expect any changes but this is a good start at least.

I’ll throw in some of my experiences.
People claim for engineer to require skill to be efficient, I say it’s a load of lies.
Just roll marauder scrapper and randomly push buttons to be at least decent in every fight. The 24/7 boons and passives will carry you anyway (same with elementalists and revenants)
Nah, I played enough matches as an engineer to meet all sorts of players so I didn’t fight nabs as you might understand it that way.
The problem is Cele stats but those won’t be removed. Even though it is a hybrid stat mix, with certain traits that boost professions with a wide variety of combat abilities, the sustain/damage is really on par with each other which should be strictly forbidden to happen.
Since the dawn of RPG’s it was known to all of us that if you rolled a good ol’ fighter, you could hit hard and be reasonably durable but you couldn’t heal much or at all. If you picked a mage based class, you could control your enemies from distance with spells and heal yourself or your allies, but just a one good poke with a stick could break you.
Why cele bunkers have to get it all ? It doesn’t matter if it requires skill or not, if someone experienced gets their hands on such a build that has so much capabilities, then it gets annoying and tiresome to fight anyway.

Good trap DH will make sure you won’t dodge out of their traps. For example in team fights when you use your dodges to evade something else, you won’t even see the traps getting set and boom, wave goodbye to your health pool.

But true that, DH is a rare sight on high-end ranked games. It may have a low skillcap to be efficient but due to it being so borderline easy and predictable, it is much more convenient for experienced players to counter this class.

Ignorance is bliss.

I made my guardian because I wished to protect my allies by destroying everything that might harm them.
Too bad we can’t emanate more protection or regeneration through passive traits more than just through hammer (which is weak) and mace, because this concept fits a guardian more than guardian 2.0 (revenant) and his facets.

HakunaMataBaby.2734:

Having a rough morning?

Place your hand over your heart.

Feel that?

That’s called purpose!

You’re alive for a reason.

Don’t give up!

Hope this made some of you think, hopefully this thread doesn’t get deleted instantly so some people can see this. Be strong guys!

Why Jora killed her brother Svanir ?

Because his attitude was unbearable.

By Jove, bless this thread !
I didn’t know it exists but since it is on the first page I’d like to ask, if it would be possible to return Glint’s Gaze Mask to the gem store for Christmas ? I and certainly some other players would be very grateful for those sweet looking blue glowy eyes.
https://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Glint's_Gaze_Mask

insanemaniac.2456:

engi is great at everything else too …

and has low skill floor viable builds …

It is true, I have never ever played an engineer and now I start to play it more than my main guardian DH.
The reasoning that: “too many buttons is making it hard”, is borderline silly.
More buttons means more opportunities and counters against certain odds, if you study engineer’s capabilities for quite some time and practice with it trying to master a few combos and rotations then it gets much more enjoyable to play it.

For the first bunch of matches I played and PvE events that I have participated in, I was just trying to keep the synergy between swiftness/superspeed heals and 24/7 boons and regeneration, all those boons that were on my allies, it felt like being a real guardian and I could still deal considerable ammounts of damage by just droping random skills while everything went down like a warm knife through butter. It doesn’t really take that much skill to be efficient if so many boons and well synergized traits carry yo butt (auto-shrink trait says hello) and such glorious damage + sustain.

Hey, I main a guardian and I love hammer, today I gave scrapper a go because I thought it is a class that takes much skill to play… I’ve never been so wrong.

Everyone says that it is hard to play due to lots of buttons and stuff. Well I see it not as something difficult but as more capabilities of fighting our enemies, seriously.
Perhaps years of playing MMORPG’s where there were lots of buttons to press brought me some good perception cause just as I picked up an engineer and studied its skill and traits, I were able to beat people on the same skill level much more easier due to lots of 24/7 boons uptime and overall damage on marauder along with the sheer tankiness of scrapper.
Or maybe I am just used to such complicated builds so it seemed easy.

I know that this is only a cosmetic item, but I guess there are some people that crave for it (at least me >:P). We got green and crimson glowy eyes so why not blue? It may sound like a special order for a cosmetic item but is it really hard to return an item back to the gem store?
I and certainly some other players would be deeply appreciative if Glint’s Gaze Mask returned to the store as a Christmas gift

IT LOOKS FREAKING AWESOME !

P.S.
Apologies if this thread doesn’t fit this forum section.

Because it’s a game and we should contribute to it no matter if we win or lose with such ridiculous advantage on our or enemy team.
We have all been there on lost scenarios when we were rekt hard, I don’t see all of those people starting threads or flooding existing topics with complaints and feedback.
Some of us just get over it and play the game, some players start to complain when things don’t play out the way they want it.
We take care of our lives so we don’t fall, we choose what we do. In the game, system chooses the matches for us. We play with a trippy MMR for as long as we get to win, it’s all good until we get them sweet pips, no matter the big gap between points. Some players just say: “No challange, Anet should fix this because there is no fun” and such “great thoughts” ends there, on map chat. But if system puts you on a losing streak just as your enemies had, then you remind yourself of this forum and start to complain when it is an inconvenience.
Yes, it is normal to complain about something that bothers us, but with real stuff that has a real impact.
If you come to forums just to QQ ONLY in cases when you lost a match just as your enemies did earlier, then that is borderline silly.

P.S.
I said about hypocrisy just once, bruh.

Belial.9350:

Rodzynald.5897:

If things run smooth in our favour we just say “MMR is broken and I do not feel the challange in wrecking the enemy team” and move on after that.
But if we get rekt hard few times then enlightenment comes to post a screen cap on the forums talking about how unfair it is.

Doesn’t change the fact that MMR is broken.

Also you’re not starving to death right? How much have you complained about the millions of people unfairly in poverty being in that situation? Pretty sure you’d have a lot more to say if you were actually in that situation. Guess this makes you a hypocrite by your standards.

Exactly! Though you bring a valid point, it is a very complicated argument that touches real life problems that cannot be fixed in few weeks/months.
What we talk about is a broken game mechanic and it is much easier to give feedback on both won and lost cases. It takes more effort helping others in real life than dropping a few words of feedback on a forum.

If things run smooth in our favour we just say “MMR is broken and I do not feel the challange in wrecking the enemy team” and move on after that.
But if we get rekt hard few times then enlightenment comes to post a screen cap on the forums talking about how unfair it is.

Random Weird Guy.3528:

4 players in queue together, obviously higher MMR, higher divisions. Meanwhile we are full soloq, lower divisions, lower MMR.

Also lost a pip at the end of it.

Funny you mention that, yesterday I was soloq as well and I remember your funky name
Your team devastated my random, I guess 2 or 3 times as we were lower tiers and u had a bunch of higher tier randoms. I don’t think that broken MMR bothered you that much back then.

Oh ! Hypocrisy

Timston.1976:

Remember this thread fellow guards? I do. Though our hope (well at least my hope) is dashed by Condi revenant and bunker mesmer) maybe we can hope for changes? Though these changes will be largely overshadowed by the fact that you shouldn’t pvp onless you are on rev or Chrono I can still hope, right?

Our dreams are shattered due to this meta. We will have to wait for much, much longer before all of our feedback threads will be noticed and taken under consideration.
I still run hambow meditation and I do well but still I am forced to go meta with traps on guild premades.
It is slightly more efficient but I do not feel the thrill of battle dropping all traps on one point and pulling someone into them (except chronobunk and revenants cause these guys just pop evade/invuln or passive glint shield and it eliminates all of the traps’ effects).
If you have luck, tons of luck to get 3 procs of air, fire sigil and chill then mighty blow hits like a truck along with JI but you have to give up a lot, to get a rare effect.

There was a post somewhere, not that long ago that guardian is one of the first classes ever created in GW2.
I start to think that our core is just a test without any upgrades for 2 years.

Thus we need to wait until we get some overhauls.
What would be better though, nerfing everyone’s boon spam upon activating 1 or 2 abilities or giving guardian tons of passive proc boons/activation boons as well ?
It gets funky seeing how we combat elementalists and as soon as they get into combat, their UI is flooded with boons (not only eles). While guardians have to either spam all their shouts for this or wait for a bunch of condis and contemplate them into boons.

Despiteful is all I have to say to those who play that team build.
This is how most of us feel when we get teamed against such premade comp:

I had my daily dose of pvp today, and I guess that the last drop of “imbalance” has poured through the glass of stacking hate and bad experiences. (In short: I snapped)
There are just few things that I’d like to mention:

1. Why elite specs get so many good traits while core specializations for some classes lay devastated and forgotten (just as certain weapons).

2. This game is said to be focused on pvp more rather than pve (this is what I heard most of the time before buying the game). There were promises and we do not see them fulfilled.

3. I and others would really like to know for what particular reason, our beloved devs thought this is going to be a great idea to start leagues on pvp with such “fancy” clusters of chaos running rampant on PvP ? (Saying about cheesy and gimmicky traits and builds).

4. Is there any info about when are we really going to be blessed with a serious balance patch?

Now there is something else I’d like to touch about current meta builds:

Oh good golly, I had the most terrific experience with this. The most scary thing about it is that some builds require skill to be good, but once you have what it takes, thses are like a demi-god to fight 1v1 or during team fights and you don’t even have a shadow of chance to win 2/3 v 1 on such beasts as some either CC lock you and be done with you, outheal with passives and slowly finish you off.
Someone told me that there are lots of buttons to push for elementalist to sustain, I guess that is right but still, why such lightly clothed class gets so many immunites, passive health regeneration and CC on top of that with considerable damage? Why is celestial stat even a thing, it just makes classes that already have a wide variety of capabilities to fight, encourage them to use every aspect of what they can muster due to being boosted instead of being dedicated to one. Of course you might say that it takes skill and there are certain trade-offs. But practice says something else, when you get your face CC’ed to the ground while your butt is whooped with fat damage and when you try to fight back, your enemy just heals on passives, then tell me how it feels.
If certain builds are supposed to be tanky, then please why someone thinks that granting them rapid regeneration, crowd control, and a damage that hits like a truck, is a good idea ? It is impossible to balance 9 different classes beacuse it is bound to happen due to the diversity between professions.
Why certain classes can’t be straight forward ? Why there has to be so many gosh darn hybrids that are capable of mixing sustain/damage/CC and boosting it with celestial stats along with a crap load of passives that save someone in the background.
Can’t we just have a nice simple concept of:
1. I can CC but I can’t deal damage and heal
2. I can deal damage but I can’t CC and heal
3. I can heal but I can’t CC and deal damage

As for now, there is a lot of cancer, cheese and salt.
There are definitely people that will /laugh at what I just said but you know, sometimes some of us have to pour some salt at certain moments to carry on later.
I guess it might be trash and I should gitgud, I don’t even know If I am bad or is this meta overwhelming.
Please enlighten me for I have lost my way in PvP, I can’t even…

It gets funky when you have a team that has a support, 2 CC spammers and 2 DH’s.
You get CC chain locked, get 2 True Shot crits to the face and we call it day.

Just give a global cooldown on traps so guards can’t cluster stack all of them in 2 seconds and we good.

Ghedoriah.4290:

Unfortunately, to be blunt, there’s also a very low skill threshold in seeing a DH and thinking that you should run up to it in a straight line to the exact spot where it’s standing to attack it.

Shiro/Glint and Viper revenants waving in the distance.

They are not forgotten, but left to ourselves now without the graceful pressence of our beloved developers.
I stand with guardians but there are much more feedback threads going in all other profession forums, especially warrior’s.

We all know that devs are now busy with leagues and christmas that will soon begin series of holiday events.

But my question is:
Are developers really that busy that they can’t at least visit their class forum and reply: “K” in the feedback threads so that we all might know that somewhere in the future we might expect some changes to certain cruicial aspects of your professions ?

Please, communicate with us more on profession forums than just in PvP and HoT forum sections.

P.S.
Mighty Karl ! Hear the guardian’s plead !

Retaliatory subconscious shouldn’t be a block.
I bring this up because after getting CC’ed our block will get removed by a weak sneeze or random AoE and in the era of CC Wars 2, this trait should rather give us an immunity to another CC aimed at us and our allies in in 600 yards radius for the whole duration of combat state.
Now that’s a passive that fits the new CC meta.

Amusing statement, I don’t play traps and I do know how to play a guardian very well, yet when I went ranked a few times with traps, everyone just stabbed out of it, dodged it or just face tanked it (bunker build) easily.

Talking about pets but I’d love to wave in the direction of condition damage.
Teasing someone with condi to force him out of condi cleanse and then dropping a huge load of damage over time abilities doesn’t smell skillful as well (the very concept of “press the button and watch someone die over time” is silly but this is just my personal opinion).
Toughness could reduce condi damage and it would be fine because the rate of condi cleanse you can muster and condi application capabilities are definitely not balanced (well it should be that way as condi builds would be useless otherwise, we could use something more than just our condi cleanse to withstand the grand cluster of condition spam mostly during teamfights).
Because if you get ambushed with a juicy stack of burn/torment/confusion/bleed and find yourself out of condi cleanse because you used it earlier to save yourself, then you just watch your health pool melt while your enemy can /laugh.

And then there are guardians standing in the corner that got their elite nerfed because we had too frequent quickness -_-
There are lots of hybrid builds that are too good at everything.
We need good ol’ – I hit hard but I can’t sustain myself and do crowd control well/ I sustain myself but I can’t crowd control and deal considerable ammount of damage/ I have lots of disrupting abilities and crowd control but I can’t sustain myself well and deal damage.

Cause DH gets weak when focused but other professions have such capabilities of face tanking everything with CC/blind fest and strong regenerating passives (or boons that wildly activate here and there).

Spear of Justice for me tends to launch players up in the air when pulling them up the hill or they stop getting pulled during the middle or just get knocked down while pulling on flat ground with no obstacles (not even little rocks or smth like that). This is really trippy and no they do not pop stab during pull, I always keep my eyes on enemy boons when using any kind of CC.

Yes… ice field symbol would be great to make some nice AoE support than just protection (plus prot doesn’t even stack). Banish for sure should affect 3 targets and get a damage boost to fit in a dps rotation.
As for Zealot’s Embrace, a cone attack would be glorious, but it needs to be more serious so:
Enemies in 300 yard radius get stunned for 3 seconds instead of rooted but those who find themsevles between 300 and 600 yards will get rooted.
Hammer could use some real hard CC than just Banish and long CD ward (To be honest, during the era of Stab Wars 2 and constant random immunities, it would work out just fine for more frequent crowd control abilities on our hammer) at least that if we won’t get a proper damage boost on un-mighty blow

EDIT:
There is a poster on the home page of GW2 that depicts a guardian wielding a hammer… hammer revamp confirmed

By the way… is there any pro league player that plays a guardian with a hammer ?
Becuase if there is then we won’t get an update cause’ “hammer is viable in pro league argument”.

Ario.8964:

What would’ve been better would be at least a small attempt of a balance patch before this season came out. You know what’s out here now? Perma cc chronomancers, no skill condi spam revenants with more passives to save their life than the number of good traits on a thief, Dragonhunters 1 shotting squishies with a skill on a 4 sec cd, condi spam reapers that somehow manage to be dishing out as much condi damage as a burn engi and being so tanky you need 2 people to kill them in a time that isn’t completely detrimental to the team, and perma prot tempests that lierally get carried by passive bs and invulns. There is 0 skill required to play anything in this meta right now and to add the poor matchmaking on top of that, you have destroyed any respect people could’ve had for this game’s pvp. This is nothing but spam wars 2.

Then to make things even better, rather than looking at all this broken crap you stealth nerf steal? Really? The 1 functioning source of long swiftness outside of dd and you go and nerf it when rev pulses the exact same thing? If this is what your decisions are gonna be like I’m not sure a balance patch will EVER be a good idea.

Normally I try to be optimistic about these things but enough is enough. These major balance patches better be MAJOR. If noobs continue to get rewarded for playing an op spam build then you can kiss your esports dream goodbye. Nobody enjoys watching the esl’s anymore because aside from a few great teams it’s the same scrubs getting carried by stupid mechanics and broken specs.

Certain newbs with strong builds can be defeated with wits if you manage (but only 1v1 from my expierience)
The true and most terrifying thing is OP builds run by veterans that have all champ X titles and know almost every weakness and know how to exploit it (this is skill).
But with the “lel passives carry me” and a grand cluster-fest of AoE and blind spam, it gets kind of tiresome to play pvp on regular basis.
At certain point during playing pvp I got 200% MAD that I just stopped caring and focused on guardian’s hammer thread to help improve that weapon along with other feedback threads (I know devs are busy but I wish they could just respond “Ok, mate” and note it down that certain classes need cruicial revamps to be more viable in the era of Passive Wars 2).

I play as a pure medi hambow guardian (hammer is weak by itself but longbow makes up for it and the build I play is indeed very profitable).
One last thing that is worth to mention. Yesterday during playing ranked I met good ol’ celestial tempest (of course he was skilled, but the very potential that lies in the concept of 4 attunements and celestial stats along with strong passives is terrific).
Once I managed to sustain myself through his immunities and finally got to damage him, I was already drained out of all my defensive cooldowns but I was still holding somehow. Then you know what happened… fight got extended as he switched to water attunement and saw how his health pool gets full in mere seconds due to passive switch and 1 or 2 skills that are on low cooldown (+ guess what ? Constant AA heals with signet boosted by water attun and celestial stats). As I couldn’t fight such a wide variety of capabilities, I was bested. When I came back to fight him, he just ran around the point while I tried to damage him or throw CC, He was just in his water attunement and doing /laugh at me.
This discouraged me to even attempt to seriously fight classes that rely on being carried by hard passives and that have a wide selection of viable abilities.

P.S.
It’s just my opinion but I think that sheer concept of elementalist being able to use 4 attunements at will is a kitteneesy (even without weapon swap they still have 20 skills to pick from).
I wouldn’t say anything if this game wasn’t flooded with “carry passives” and I don’t think there is much skill hidden behind one trait that pops without your knowledge and saves you while in other case you would be dead just because you find it less convenient with playing classes that have to execute active skills to sustain themselves.
If Anet really likes passives, then they should make sure that every class has such traits put in convenient trait lines.
Though I still think GW2 is the most balanced MMORPG and if you say it isn’t, then you clearly didn’t play enough of other MMORPG’s or just played face-roll classes.

All those pro players playing all these cheesy builds on ranked to make their win rate even higher.
L-O-V-E-L-Y

Okay, let’s be honest… MMORPG’s can’t be balanced as we know it due to too much diversity to the very concept of having 9 very different professions, this ain’t an FPS game that you just have to nerf one weapon’s damage to make it balanced or something like that.
There will be just less or more balance every now and then.

We cannot fade, we have to prevail with our feedbacks !
At least keep this thread up for long enough.

Cele temepsts can do everything you need it to do as well, nobody says a word -_-

I wish Anet could make a second set of skills that we can choose for staff but in melee, something like Rev has.
Then I would think about forgiving for not having land polearms in the game

If Zeal is about being well…. zealous and unrelenting and if we want it to be a symbol friendly trait, then:

1. Symbolic avenger could get merged with writ of persistence or writ should get moved somewhere in the zeal line.

2. To give it more sense we might toss out Binding jeopardy (really, is there someone who has real use for this ?) and throw glacial heart in it !

It’s a really tough if hammer was to get moved into another trait line.
Virtues are nice but hammer competed with 2 too good traits, and hammer trait itself is too weak to pick so it should either change places in Virtues or get moved into Honor or Valor.
Honor and Zeal are potential symbol boosting traitlines.
Though in hammer thread I was sure about removing the symbol, now I see that it has to stay as it is the very flavour of this weapon that is quite helpful if traited well.
I am still torn between valor and honor due to being a meditation guardian and I really enjoy it but I might think that honor will work out better.
As for traits:

Major adept: Invigorated Bulwark - This ability could get merged with glacial heart and be renamed to something like “Blunt judgement” and instead of chill proc, make hammer symbol an ice field along with 20% cooldown reduction to both mace and hammer (this could work out great with writ).

Major Master: Pure of Heart - The heal is very weak for such a situational passive, it should be relevant for us to pick during every encounter not only for shelter and aegis. Yes there are possibilities to make it more frequent like as I mentioned, empowering shelter if you get bursted, using F3 and then renewed focus to F3 again but the question is… is anyone really going to do that ? It’s not worth it so this passive should get dank, because why not ? We really need a little sprinkle of sustain passives.
People say that guardians are already good at sustaining themselves, but only with traited shouts and medis and nothing else. Even then, we have to (watch out, cruicial word here) ACTIVATE it to save ourselves. (It’s for another thread but i’d like to mention how many passive boons elementalists get just for swapping attunements or popping few skills that flood their UI with all of those sweet boons).
There are two ideas, though one will definitely get ignored but heck:
1. As long as we have aegis, we get 25% running speed (we won’t get it cause we got perma swiftness with staff and retreat)
2. If our aegis gets destroyed, it shatters and randomly drops 5 pieces of aegis (just like fragments of faith) that heals us or our allies for 200 health for each fragment and grants protection for 2 seconds for each piece, stacks duration.

Last but not least
Major Grandmaster: Writ of Persistence - It might be too much but I think that for the sake of viability of symbols we should really have it ! This is: symbols move along with us.

That’s a nice idea, this thread will keep it floating for as long as we need.
I am curious if is there any good way to contact Karl and take some of his precious time to check out at least hammer and sword threads.

Guardian is overall outdated, looking at certain traitlines of other professions (not all ofc) they seem to have better traits to choose between and what seems most important – better passives.
Someone laughed at it when I said that guardians have weak sustain passives and couldn’t name anything more than just aegis, and traited maditations… now let’s look at how elementalists just roll their faces over the keyboard, look up and see a wide variety of boons and life saving immunities, stabs and blinds, but that is for another thread.

It is really bolstering that this thread had started a chain reaction of other feedback threads, we just have to keep the Meta thread up and maybe try to lure Karl into it

Yup, hard CC on AA is too much, perhaps blind every 3rd AA might be as well (though mesmers can spam this easily with shatters or whatever they have and I envy them :C).
What if hammer had LoF range and do as a mobility skill as well ? Along with symbol bonus blast damage and ticks it should work out just fine.

About fields, all light fields should be either improved or changed into fire field (cause purifying fire concept… you know the drill).
Perhaps our light fields could pop 1 stack of burn per 2 ticks this could make an interesting burn symbol build but I am afraid that with writ of persistence it might become a yet another cancer burning build that would be a pain to fight on points if someone decided to go with mace and just keep perma symbol.

Khenzy.9348:

Oh! I love these kind of threads. Regardless of profession.

I think the hammer needs a lot of love in terms of feeling and useability, some other weapons need some love as well, sword comes to mind, scepter too, greatsword as well, but slightly less.

My suggestions:

—Let’s start with the Autoattack, it definetly feels slow, clunky, and not really fun to use at all most of the time. It also places a light field on the ground, overlapping some other more useful fields, which is a big nono. It’s also mostly unuseable in PvP due to its incredibly long cast time.

Proposed solution. Let’s ‘normalize’ the autoattack cast time, and remove the Symbol of Protection from the 3rd attack of the chain.
New attack, Protective Bash (or whatever, you know). ¾s cast time. Hard hitting attack that applies 2 seconds of protection to allies if you hit a foe.

—Now with Mighty Blow. It’s definetly lacking something and now Symbol of protection needs to go somewhere. This particular attack doesn’t really feel impactful enough, it can do decent damage and be used as a blast finisher, but it also sadly helps in the overall clunky feeling of the weapon. It needs more OMH in my honest opinion.

Proposal. Mighty Blow leap range increased to 600. CD doubled, increased to 10 seconds. Whenever you hit a foe, you drop a Symbol of Protection at their feet that lasts 4 seconds.

—Zealot’s Embrace turn. This attack is really weird and doesn’t really feel ‘sinegistic’ with the weapon itself. The description says it’s a wave attack, when in fact it really is a tiny projectile that doens’t really act as a projectile. It’s as if this attack belongs to an entirely different weapon altogether in spite of its CC nature.

Proposal. Zealot’s Embrace is now a proper wave attack. It now acts as a cone attack very similar to Warriors Hammer Shock skill. 600 range. Cast time and CD ramain the same. It now immobilizes for 2 seconds up to 5 targets in the 600 range cone attack.

—Banish. This skill has a high CD, a high cast time and is very very telegraphed. It’s a really strong CC, though. The most important issue here is that it only hits a single target. How many times have you wasted this high CD CC on a random trash mob among a clusterkitten of mobs? Or even against a random ranger pet, or mesmer clone, or even a MM necro minion in PvP?

Proposal. Banish now affects up to 3 targets.

—Ring of Warding. We all know how fluid and fun it became the day warriors could perform their Staggering Blow while on the move. It wouldn’t make RoW too strong becouse it has a decent cast time as well as a really high CD for a weapon skill.

Proposal. You can now cast Ring of Warding while on the move. You move slightly slower during the cast time (like with Whirling Wrath).

Glacial Heart trait. As many have pointed out here already, it’s very badly located which also reduces hammer viability as a whole becouse it competes with two much stronger traits.

Proposal. Glacial Heart is moved to adept in place of Master of Consecrations. Such trait now takes the previous place of Glacial Heart.
_______

The hammer would end up like this:

> Hammer Swing . ½s cast. 3 targets. 130 range.
>> Hammer Bash . ½ cast. 3 targets. 130 range.
>>> Protective Bash . ¾s cast. 3 targets. 130 range. 2s of protection to allies in 300 range.
Mighty Blow. ¾s cast. 10s CD. 5 targets. 600 range. Applies Symbol of Protection that lasts 4 seconds if an enemy is hit.
Zealot’s Embrace. 1s cast. 15s CD. 5 targets. 600 range. It’s now a proper cone attack like warrior’s Hammer Shock skill. Immobilizes for 2s up to 5 foes hit in the cone.
Banish. 1s cast. 25s CD. 3 targets.130 range.
Ring of warding. ¾s cast. 40s CD. Can now be used while on the move. You move slightly slower during the cast time.

Glacial Heart and Master of Consecration traits switch places.

Now that’s some dangity dang good changes, I’d definitely go with those, even Mighty blow seems nice but I think if it gets 10 seconds cooldown, it should definitely get a true shot damage OR more overall sustained damage, otherwise it will just be a poke>poke>bash and CC without any impactful damage on demand so our enemies might just outheal the damage or soak it in straight to the face and not get intimidated by the fact that we are using hammer. (Trust me, Mighty Blow at times feels just like 3rd AA blow)
Psst… though I cross my fingers and wish for 3rd AA to remain slow but apply some CC like 1 second daze, but that’s just me

Darknicrofia.2604:

mitigation > healing.

as soon as enemy team finds out you aren’t running shelter, you’ll get targeted and dropped faster than a necro.

You are right about that, always evading and blocking attacks is better than soaking it in but it all depends on the situation.
I’ve spent all 4 months almost every day doing mostly pvp on guardian, trying all the fancy builds and constructing my own.
Shelter is great indeed, but 6 seconds between heals sometimes is really a big gap that gets you killed.
Let’s say that we run marauder stats. Shelter heals for about 4500 health while traited medis with smite condis heals for about 5500 and gives you 6 seconds of 25% damage converted into healing (which in a mix with AoE blast crit spree, it might get + 2k more heals or even more, depends on how many enemies there are both in pvp and pve), as well as shorter cooldown.
As I used shelter after some fights when I needed a desperate heal, I somehow felt like I wasted that skill but LoW I could pop anytime and be fine with it.
Once you pop shelter, you will just get that health dropped down in seconds if you get unlucky, but with LoW (traited) as a partial dps utility, it’s great for counter attack, you get more fury and pop some stab in it so you don’t get CC’ed while healing with that 25%. (though It sometimes feels weak, it might be 50% damage converted to healing :>).

It’s a different story with a block bunker build though.

Instead of this thread, visit the one that was made earlier: https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/professions/guardian/Guardian-hammer-Feedback/page/3#post5792359

It is about our hammer and we should talk about it and keep it on surface for long enough for at least one dev response.