Guild Wars 2

I believe you are correct, it removes two conditions every ten seconds at the same time, going on what I’ve read previously.
Ranged classes? I usually bring Wall of Reflection and let them either shoot themselves in the face, stop firing or close to melee, at that point I switch to hammer and trap them. I also have a shield, Shield of Absorption is really useful as a follow up after Wall of Reflection as any smart Ranger would wait till the wall goes down before they unleash all their hard hitting skills again. SoA’s projectile absorption also persists longer than the graphics suggest, it’s a little situational but a real life saver. Not really a guaranteed solution to ranged classes but it really helps. If you had a 1h sword you could also use Zealot’s Defense after SoA then teleport up to them but I still find sword to be quite underwhelming

I’ve had a warrior almost entirely kill himself from Wall of Reflection. Best skill ever.

You’re ‘threatening’ to quit over the artwork? Really?

Aesthetics are in the eye of the beholder, I’m sure. I’ll bet for whatever armour you don’t like the look of, there are plenty of people that are doing their best just to get it cause they think it looks awesome.
Understand that ArenaNet cannot appeal to everyone’s taste in a single armour set, or even across various sets. You don’t like it? Well that’s why they made transmutation stones for this very reason. Don’t want to buy gems using free, in-game gold to get the stones? Then live with what you’ve got or lower your standards.

Most of the heavy armour in this game doesn’t really appeal to me but I found a set I REALLY like the look of and kept that look using stones. I don’t really see what the big deal is.

I discovered the freaking awesomeness of Guardian’s hammer in the numerous, short duration stress tests before release where I figured I would just run around doing pvp.
Although I don’t need to tell anyone here that hammer is good, half the threads a fair few threads around here are about it, after all.
I can’t really put the hammer away when I’m pvping. Kinda like how I can’t take Wall of Reflection off my bar… ever… so good…

Anyway, yesterday, I decided to do some, “Play Now!” pvp. In the past, clicking that dastardly button usually resulted in me getting matched up against higher numbers, usually me versus two others. Yesterday was no different However, after flattening one member of the opposing team then dying to their half killed teammate after knocking one of them around and trapping the other about ten times or so (yeah I’m stubborn and I was trialling some kind of glass tennis ball shooter build -shudder-) one of them obviously had to go for some reason, probably somewhere I couldn’t flatten them with a hammer but before they left, instead of hurling insults at me they announced that they had a new-found appreciation for the Guardian’s hammer
That made me grin. Sure, hammer’s not without its faults but at least skillful (I hope…) application of its skills can help people perhaps try out something new and potentially fun!

Now if only the same could be said about scepter….

It was also nice to see someone who could handle being beaten without being a child about it (I totally was not winning the round by the way, it was like 350 – 80ish their way). Anyway random stranger, thanks for the fun, almost 1vs1 fights!

I guess it’s not much of a story really, I’m sure there are some other cool stories people would like to share! I’d certainly like to read them.
<Insert GW2 tag line here>

I think many people are also forgetting that two people can actually achieve quite a lot
Especially considering it’s their full time job. Let’s also not discount all the people involved in the design, discussion and testing.

How many people started GW1? Three.

This method would make guild runs the ONLY way to do it.

It seems like a good idea but then people like me would starting getting annoyed at humanity because of all the naked Human/Norn females that would be running around fighting at full capacity…
I think they played it safe enough with helmet and shoulders.
People would then start requesting exotic underwear skins….

However, if they added a ‘costume slot’ for armour like what previous games have done, that would be pretty cool although that kind of makes transmutation stones redundant.

The only way I’ve got 25 stacks myself was with Empower + Empowering Might + greatsword + Virtue of Justice with Inspired Virtue + Might of the Protector with Shelter.

My predictions are that I’ll get all excited about some up coming Guardian changes only to find scepter and sword behave in the same manner they always have.
I’m still looking forward to it but I’m not getting my hopes up. Hopefully I get surprised.

Reihert.1509:

When you use consacration…. well, you get consacration, long CD and nothing else.

I disagree, you get COMBOS. Our only combo fields that aren’t light are consecrations. Wall of Reflection is also our longest lasting light field, available with any weapon loadout. If you have people around you, those two fire fields can also be AoE might, AoE burning, single target burning. If you have a Wall of Reflection on the playfield, you’re also enabling ridiculous amounts of condition removal and a healthy dose of retaliation on top of the incredible damage it can reflect.
Even with Hallowed Ground, yeah Stand Your Ground might be better in a lot of situations but for holding a point, Hallowed Ground can be a game changer, not to mention if you have Altruistic Healing (and who doesn’t these days?) every second an ally is in there, you get healed for each ally!

I can’t take Wall of Reflection off my bar. I also use the Consecrated Ground trait with Wall of Reflection and Purging Flames. It’s supremely useful.

Yes I’m assuming there’s people around using finishers but that’s exactly what the combo fields are for. They aren’t stand alone as you say.

Hey everyone, I made a thread a little while ago where people could post their various weapon ideas. As such, nobody’s said anything on it but if you’re interested you could have a look! (I didn’t mention scepter, I figured I would let someone else do that )
While I don’t think I agree with the OP’s staff suggestions, things like this often pave the way for real improvement! Suggesting something isn’t a crime and making a weapon fun for everyone would be far more beneficial for both the people who don’t like it and the people that do because they may not even know the cool potential some weapons could have.
For instance, if you ask me, I think sword and scepter have a lot of potential, I just don’t think they were executed very well, staff needs a little tweaking too I think.
In any case, feel free to have a look at the thread I started or just keep discussing here, either way

Here’s the weapon suggestion thread I made:
https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/professions/guardian/Guardian-Weapons-Suggestions-Thread/first#post678895

I’ve done it before by using it and popping the heal on it. The thing that made it persist was standing completely motionless. Sheathing my weapons made it disappear.
I think it’s purely graphical, I don’t think it absorbs projectiles for the whole duration.

I could throw some ranting in for good measure if you want.

Valkyrie? I’m not sure if this is a joke or not….
Valkyries are exclusively women I believe. Don’t they also use spears and fly? I’m not sure what the correlation between Valkyries and Guardians are.
Why two shields? I’m so confused.

“Zealous Blade healer LFG” is by far the best one so far! Well done sir or madam.

“I just completed my Healing Breeze cast again!”
“Merciful Intervention really saved the day in that fight!”
“The Human male Empower animation looks really good!”
“A Guardian just killed me with ranged! >:(”

Guardian is the most fun I’ve had in ANY MMO.
I also agree with Ynna here. I’m always throwing ideas around, I just hope ArenaNet sees them!

Not sure whether to put this in the Suggestions or Guardian Threads so I’ll let the moderators decide.

We all have various ideas for or problems with the Guardian weapons, this might have been done before but I’ll attempt to start one anyway. People get mad regardless.

Throw all the weapon suggestions you can in here!

I’ll get the ball rolling.

Sword
I really want to like sword, I find its aesthetic the most appealing but I don’t like it. It’s boring, you mostly just spam #1 then only miss with #3 if the target slightly moves…

1. Chain:
   I suppose any changes to the #1 chain would make it a little overpowered, while it’s still kinda boring, it works well enough, triggers Justice often and works well with crit builds.
2. Flashing Blade:
   If we wanted to keep the same basic functionality of this skill, I have two suggestions for it:
   a) Make it a leap finisher for the love of all that is good, please do this! Mesmer’s staff #2 teleport (from memory) is a leap finisher, surely ours could be too?!
   b) Make it do good damage!
3. Zealot’s Defense:
   a) Have the projectiles hit foes in a line. I seriously thought this skill would do this when I first saw it. It sure looks like they would.
   b) Have the projectiles blocked from this skill count as real blocks in regard to traits/runes.
   c) Please let us MOVE whilst using this skill!

What these changes would do would raise sword’s synergy with traits and allies a good deal without overpowering it (that I can see) whilst addressing some of the pitfalls of it. I don’t quite understand why Zealot’s Defense has to be single target anyway.

Full body, metal armour makes noise when you move. It isn’t even loud. I don’t really see why it’s a big deal.
I always wondered, in other games, why the heavy armour didn’t make any noise.
Aside from them putting in a checkbox in audio options, I think you’re gonna have to live with it
I’d rather they fix up a few weapons for Guardian anyway…

It used to be a small bubble but they changed it to what it is today. Granted, you also used to be motionless when you used it….

I found that clicking the button with the skill on it and then clicking it again without taking the mouse off the button places the consecration as though you didn’t have the trait. I think it changed a bit recently though as it’s been placing them below me now…

The term, ‘depth’ is subjective. The only thing this adds to the game is a means for people who know how to, a way to do more damage than they should be doing which gives them a clear advantage over people who don’t use it or don’t know how to do so (Mostly in regard to pvp but it applies in pve too). If you can ‘speed up’ attacks voluntarily, why not just make them faster all the time? If this were a genuine feature, it would make not doing feel stupid, like the gunblade attacks in FF8.
The fact that this exploit costs endurance is irrelevant, it’s still an exploit. The karma vendor exploit still cost people karma.
Additionally, there is already a means for increasing attack speed in the game and it’s generally very short duration with a reasonably long cooldown. Why? Because increased attack speed kicks kitten and I think it’s pretty safe to assume that after putting such a long cooldown and short duration on Quickness, AreneNet aren’t just going to turn around and say, ‘Oh hey! You found our hidden attack speed increaser that you can use multiple times in a single fight! You’re a better player than all the others, well, enjoy winning!’.

TL;DR: Exploit.

I think it is intended. Think about it, its damage is actually pretty good AND it heals multiple allies, if it did big damage on three enemies AND healed allies people would probably be calling for nerfs.
That said, I feel Faithful Strike hitting one enemy is one of the reasons mace doesn’t score too high on damage, I still love my mace and it’s arguably not about damage more than sustain but I, too, would like to see this skill hitting three enemies and triggering the heal once.

Doesn’t matter what people say, this is an exploit. I fail to see how interrupting something makes it complete faster. Feature my kitten

I’m confused because I’ve seen people walk into it, fall over, try to dodge out of it, fall over, try to dodge again and fall over again. Meanwhile they’re sitting in my symbol with me smashing them. It works more often than not for me.

I didn’t read through all this, I just wanted to say that a skill that makes people continually fall over due to their own lack of paying attention is a winner in my books.

I always have a shield handy! I often use it in situations where both melee and ranged are attacking me, I try to position myself correctly as to block the ranged but round up the melee together or to simply protect my allies from the ranged and push melee away from them. It’s a little tricky to do but it works well enough. I pretty much use Shield of Judgement on cooldown, I’ve seen it do some ok crits and the AoE protection is great, especially combined with Altruistic Healing, which I can’t go without.
The emegency heal on Shield of Absorption is really great too, especially when you’re only fighting enemies that aren’t using ranged, knock ’em around then get a free heal. I also often use it to stop an ally from getting stomped in pvp as it will interrupt ANYONE attempting to stomp.

Exploit. Dodging isn’t for reducing attack times.

@Ghotistyx I’ll do some more tests on each fist hitting multiple enemies, I’ve not seen them hit more than one, most other skills that hit foes in close proximity have multiple numbers, so I’m not entirely sure why they’d suppress that on this skill alone.

To be honest, I think tiny little ghost fists flying around making mosquito noises next to the glowy tennis balls we’re launching out just makes scepter feel lame on top of having pretty mediocre skill effects although Chains of Light is pretty good I guess.
No finishers, no boons, no conditions (aside from Chains of Light and Virtue of Justice), no combo fields, just plain old, easily avoidable, boring damage.
SMITE SHOULD BE A FREAKING LIGHTNING BOLT FROM THE SKY! (+weakness and/or burning)
Orb of Wrath should look similar to how light field affected projectiles look, move at a similar speed and maybe have a tiny little blue explosion (pop!) at the end that hits three or so enemies! Even a complete rework! I don’t care as long as it’s cool!

Anyway, I digress, I went and looked at every profession’s weapon skills and the weapons that were more single target than anything else all seemed to have additional effects suchs as conditions, control etc with the exception of Guardian’s scepter, just damage with the occasional handy immobilise.
Sadness.

Mace is lowest dps?! Just cause it’s slow doesn’t mean it doesn’t hit hard (in reality, the mace’s chain is only half a second longer than greatsword). Protector’s Strike and Faithful Strike hit for a pretty decent amount, especially if they crit not to mention relatively spammable symbol ticks. Protector’s Strike is awesome!

Works fine in combat from what I’ve seen.

Are you certain? I’ve rounded up a bunch of foes and thrown it on them and cancelled any other attacks and I still only saw one number at a time. Granted, it is hard to test as the damage is randomly dispersed around the area of effect (another thing wrong with it, we all agree) so I could just be unlucky and they only ever hit one enemy by chance but it has done that every time I tested.

Yeah I agree that more enemies == more chances for the thing to hit, however, not many other aoe’s behave in that manner plus it still would be less effective due to its total damage being spread out amoungst multiple foes as opposed to normal AoE skills just hitting all (five) foes for roughly the same damage.

So you may have noticed me around pointing out how I don’t quite like where scepter and sword are sitting for Guardians, anyway, I’ve been doing a little testing with the scepter and I noticed with Smite only ONE damage number ever seems to come up at a time. You may say, ‘Well it hits fifteen times, what are you worried about?’, what I’m worried about is that this means that Smite becomes less effective the more enemies there are.

An AoE skill…. that’s less effective…. against multiple enemies…..

In addition to that, as we all know, it already doesn’t do reliable damage anyway considering it can miss something that’s standing smack in the middle of the AoE.

I really hope a rework of scepter is in the works (also making sword more worthwhile would be nice! ) because this just doesn’t make a whole lot of sense. Against five or more enemies even Symbol of Faith or Symbol of Protection easily out-class Smite… Yes I know it’s pretty spammable but it doesn’t DO anything interesting at all, if it applied, say, a short weakness or something, then I would be able to tolerate it only every hitting one thing at a time. I certainly hope I’m wrong about all this and I will continue testing it out but what I’ve said is what I’ve found so far.
What I would prefer is that Smite be changed into a symbol but there’s exactly two hundred threads on that already*

*This is a hyperbole.

I, too, thought I would always be rolling around with sword+shield. I like the shield, I admit it’s a little lacking but it has really saved the day multiple times and once you learn good times to use its skills, it’s not that bad at all.
Sword, however, I find it really disappointing, I love the idea behind Zealot’s Defense but it really isn’t reliable unless the target is motionless. Blocking projectiles is nice, however, they don’t even count as real blocks, so any traits related to blocking are wasted on it. I also love that it has a teleport but it’s not usable outside of combat and its damage is almost non-existant. The chain does good damage yes, it procs Justice often, yes but you can actually proc Justice almost as much, if not, equally as much as sword with good use of other weapons too. Heck, if you have five enemies lined up (which in pve is pretty easy) Wave of Wrath (staff #1) would proc Justice EVERY hit, any weapon with a symbol can also proc it really often so I wouldn’t really say it’s one of the biggest draws to sword for me.
Frankly, I hate to say it, greatsword seems to outshine it in almost every regard, it has a gap closing, aoe blind that does good damage with a similar cooldown; it has team support through boons, combos and symbols (which can obviously be traited various ways); it has MORE boons through its #1 chain which increase damage and synergise with traits (Altruistic Healing); self comboing condition removal and retalition and to top it off, a pretty good control move. All whilst doing much more aoe damage, you will pretty much always kill three things faster with greatsword than it takes sword to kill one thing.
Greatsword, as an offensive weapon, still brings far more to the team than sword does. I really hope sword gets addressed somehow as I really love its aesthetic.
“But Silver”, you say, “you’re forgetting offhands!”, well let’s look at offhands + sword then. I find shield works ok with it if you’re going for team support so that has nice team synergy at least but the combo field has a very short duration to cooldown ratio, which greatsword still beats after its revision (I’m not discounting the damage reduction and small heal shield brings though). Sword+torch is ok, aside from good damage, the only thing extra it brings to the team is a condition removal, very situational too though, as you’d probably prefer to burninate your enemies than burninate your buddy’s conditions, plus having a light field, such as Symbol of Wrath on greatsword, can still provide much better condition removal from allies without having to ‘aim’ it away from foes. Sword + Focus isn’t too bad as you get a blast finisher and some personal survivability, Ray of Judgement, whilst looking kinda lame is pretty handy. The drawback of sword+focus though, is that focus’ cooldowns are much longer than greatsword, with one 45ish blast finisher compared to greatsword’s THREE finishers with a 10, 15, 30 cooldowns STILL brings a little more to the table in regard to helping the team.
A lot of people would now probably say something like, “Sword supports the team by making things die”, true that but so does greatsword and probably to greater effect, especially versus a lot of enemies.
I know what I’m saying is quite subjective and looks like I’m completely praising the greatsword. I’m not though, I would really prefer to use sword+X over greatsword but greatsword still seems to offer so much more.
Sorry for the wall.

People complained that they couldn’t use anything other than greatsword in pve, they alter it a little and now everyone is complaining it isn’t the way they want it.
ArenaNet, like many/every other game company, CANNOT make everyone happy. Hypothetically, if they implemented some changes that made you really pleased, chances are, someone would be writing up a forum post about how they don’t listen to paying customers. I think people need to calm down about weapon skill changes, learn to use it in a new way or branch out to something else. I, for one, don’t mind the changes to greatsword at all, it made me try a few other combinations and stuff, I had fun and if ArenaNet think this balances the weapon a little more, I trust them since they have teams of people that work on balance and I’m certain they see how things like this change affect overall game balance a lot better than we do as butthurt Guardian players.

…let’s face it, it pretty much still plays exactly the same anyway, it’s nothing to get into a huff about.

It already exists. Look for a little button around the top left of the crafting window, you’ll find a nice variety of filter options available.

I really don’t know why so many people are having this problem. I couldn’t help but be over levelled for everything!
I guess people are just trying to get to 80 as fast as possible and are, ironcally, missing all the stuff that would have got them there faster anyway…

I gotta say though, in regards to Unscathed Contender, there have been times where I’m sitting back with a staff, flinging buffs one way and slow, non-projectile projectiles another where I think, ‘Wow I’ve had aegis on me for a long time, imagine if I had Unscathed Contender…’
And then I never change to it because I like ground targetted consecrations.

Also, if you pay close attention to GW1 maps, THE ZONES ARE SQUARES TOO! :O
So I’m not entirely sure why that’s a problem.

I remember when our #2 downed skill simply blinded…
What we have now is glorious.

“The crafting / gathering system that has no meaning other than getting experience and money”

Sorry but I laughed at that one. Yeah I hate money and experience too.

Seriously though, there are a lot of people they keep essentially saying, ‘GW2 isn’t GW1! Hmpf!‘, if you prefer almost everything in GW1, then play it instead! Personally, I think GW2 is leagues better than GW1, yeah it doesn’t work in the same way but if it did, people would put up a 34 point list about how it’s a reskin of the original and didn’t bring anything new to the table.

We don’t NEED heroes in GW2 because the content isn’t designed entirely for parties and if anything, I found heroes made the game feel more single player, as opposed to what you said, due to the fact they were more reliable than players and I could replace Dbags with them. I think people have already been spoiled by GW2’s features and are already complaining about them. You dislike the repetative nature of POI’s, hearts, vistas, skillpoints and waypoints? As opposed to, quests, quests, quests, quests and quests?

I’m not going to run through every point, even though I pretty much either disagree or have a few things to say about each as I’m pretty sure I’d be lucky you read this far. Anyways, I’m not making fun of you or anything, I’m just essentially saying, ‘Lighten up dude! If you like GW1, go play it.’

Katanas are swords.

Pretty sure I agree with pretty much everything Ynna has said here. Also, Resolve can be more useful than it initially looks As with an on-demand aegis.

I think it’s cool but I think people would kick up a stink about it being too restrictive and I guess that’s a valid point. Some would complain that it’s now an MMORTS, others would probably just start swearing and saying things about your parents… People already complain enough that the waypoints are always contested, I actually like them that way, it means you have to fight for your place in Orr, which makes sense and is kind of already in the flavour of what you’re suggesting.
For every person who expresses an interest in an idea there are a bunch more telling the person who thought it up to die in a fire and probably an equivalent amount who liked it and said nothing.
I also think that, unless it was implemented to avoid this, people would focus only on the events that got them to their goal, meaning any extra content in the areas would effectively be missed by a large portion of the players and we know how much ArenaNet likes us seeing all the work they put into the world.
In any case, I like the idea at least but I think they restricted us in a way that isn’t too invasive on our invasion

The thing that makes me laugh about this thread is that people are saying things like, ’Wouldn’t it be cool if we could do events, farming and leveling whilst under constant threat of being killed?!’
THAT IS WORLD VS WORLD!
They gave you what you wanted and now people are making threads about wanting something that’s already there?! facepalm

I agree the Guardian feels a little lackluster at times. Ironically, for different reasons, I find the sword to be one of the least useful weapons, whichs saddens me but I’ve got other threads on that. I think everyone agrees on the lameness of scepter. Not sure what you meant about removing cast times on symbols and making them cast on the run; they all have that functionality except for Symbol of Wrath and the others have really short casts, with the possible exception of hammer but come on, it’s easily the most spammable symbol in the game.
Auras granting constant boons would be a little overpowered if you ask me, especially if you consider the Altruistic Healing trait.

Wait, I’m confused, you’re asking for Elementalists to be able to do what they already do?
I’ve seen the heals a water Elementalist can put out and they’re already pretty good, especially considering you get a 5 trait point passive heal, everyone has their own heals as well in addition to combos to water fields healing people too.
Also, I doubt they would add a dedicated healer after developing a system that doesn’t need it.

Good example, Guardian minor trait Elusive Power: Your deal more damage at low endurance.
How much more? 1%? 5%? 10%? What is considered low endurance? <50%? <10%?
These and many others are all important things I’d really like to know. I could sit here and list them but we all know how it is.

Yeah I think I’ll be buying quite a few Fine Transmutation stones…

I switched to Tome of Wrath just for fun, it actually works a treat.

This probably goes against your style but I’ve attached a picture of my Guardian. I got the karma armour from Orr but didn’t like the spikeyness of the helmet, gloves and boots so I mixed them up with the karma armour from Frostgorge Sound. Easy as pie to get and look pretty swish if you ask me!
The dye colours are Mithril, Antique Gold and I think Stone if you’re interested.
I’m not totally happy with the gloves and boots but I’m going to just save up for the tier 3 cultural ones.

[Edit]
Also, I just wanted to add, the loot actually does scale, you have a smallish chance upon receiving loot that you get some appropriate level gear. Doesn’t mean 80’s will only get 80 gear but I got some level 77ish gear in Queensdale helping someone.
Another point, what are you doing getting caught up on not getting epic loot in a lowbie area? The event rewards already easily pay for waypoints and/or dying costs and aren’t you there to help your friend? Isn’t that the reward?

[Edited by CC: Answer to a deleted rant removed]