Guild Wars 2

I am certainly in favour of this kind of set up. It could be balanced quite well if each skill selection were on a per slot basis. For example, #1 slot choices will only offer auto attack skills along the theme you’ve already suggested etc, etc.
It really means that each weapon could be put in whatever build you like to play.
I really like swords but I can’t use them on my Guardian without gimping the support style I enjoy playing. This change would fix that to some extent.

I consider stacking sigil effects persisting after removing the weapon with the sigil on it an exploit.

The one handed weapons for Guardians could stand to be improved, I feel they lack the level of trait synergy and the synergy with each other that some other professions enjoy. I’ll try to be as concise as possible.

Sword
- Sword Wave’s arc is way too narrow. I would prefer a standard melee arc attack that hits up to three foes three times each.
- Zealot’s Defense, I feel, really needs to at least hit foes in a line. Perhaps up to three targets, similar to Orb of Light.
- Zealot’s Defense needs to either allow movement whilst channeling or some minor homing on its projectiles.
- Flashing Blade needs to do actual damage. It may as well heal foes the way it is at the moment. One time, I saw it crit for 120.
- Flashing Blade really needs to be a leap finisher, I cannot stress how much more interesting sword would be if this were implemented.
- The sword needs a cripple somewhere! Seriously. Every single other profession can dole out cripple like it’s going out of style.
- I know this is asking too much but a symbol on the sword (might or fury symbol perhaps?) would certainly open up room for a lot of trait synergy and even interesting support builds. If you have to rework a skill to do it, take Sword Wave! (Yes, I can count to five too but what sword build has F1 not already on cooldown?)
- Failing that, a rework of Flashing Blade to behave in a similar manner to the Risen Noble’s symbol. Teleport and symbol on target.

Mace
Mace is in a really good spot but there are a few things that could increase its usefulness.

- Protector’s Strike really needs to be a whirl finisher (some say blast finisher, I’ll take it) regardless of whether it blocked an attack or not.
- Some kind of active use skill on Protector’s Strike on par with other professions’ counter-attack skills.
- It would be mighty fine if its chain #3 skill hit up to three foes. Just the damage portion, I’m not asking for a heal proc per foe hit.

Scepter
- Orb of Wrath…. come on. Sluggishness aside, this skill should be a 20% projectile finisher. WE ONLY HAVE ONE and it’s underwater.
- Smite really has to be a symbol, sure it’s ok enough against a single, stationary target but in a group of foes it only tickles. I’d prefer actual trait synergy and evenly spread out, reliable damage with whatever boons to boot. I am most certainly not ignoring that it does do a lot of damage, it just has a little too much character if you catch my drift.

Focus
- Ray of Judgement isn’t actually guaranteed condition removal as far as I’m aware. Perhaps something in a similar vein to Necro dagger #4? Maybe just have it remove a condition on use or something, I dunno, your call here. WHAT IF IT CONVERTED THEM?!?!
- I will most certainly not object to a rework of Ray of Judgement to behave similarly to GW1’s Ray of Judgement!

Shield
I quite like shield where it is but others have mentioned some changes.
- Keep Shield of Judgement’s active effect but have it behave in more of a counter-attack way similar to Protector’s Strike with the option to activate it without blocking. Gives the shield at least one block eh?
- Some people have suggested a stun/daze on Shield of Judgement.
- Others have asked for the Shield of Absorption detonate to be a blast finisher, I see this as a difficult change unless it’s made to never trigger from the light field created from Shield of Absorption.
- Many feel that the cooldowns are too long.

Torch
- What would happen if Cleansing Flame also removed conditions from the casting Guardian?!
- Failing the previous suggestion, what if Zealot’s Flame “burnt” a condition away each time it ticked the AoE burn?

Feel free to disagree, try to be civil about it. I am in no way demanding these changes, however, I feel that most, if not all of them, would make one-handers a lot more enjoyable.
What are your suggestions? I admit, I hardly use focus or torch so my input there is average.

Simply roll any other profession….

The Binding Jeopardy trait wouldn’t be that different from Warrior’s Leg Specialist, really. It would also introduce some good cross trait synergy into Zeal.

The Kindled Zeal one isn’t really that bad either considering you would have to use up a utility slot to even make use of it. Necros still have more and better condition control if you ask me, at least from a self-affecting perspective.

Some of these are pretty solid ideas, I kinda like Might of the Protector where it is though.

I think a good idea for smite condition would be simply have its current effect also apply to allies in a 300ish radius, its spell effect is already somewhat of an aoe looking effect. Obviously the damage would only trigger once, not per ally.

I quite like the Shimmering Defense idea.

I won’t deny that I’ve also seen the shield in some pretty strange places when lag wouldn’t have been an issue. Something is definitely awry with it, functionality aside .

I’d say that lag plays a large factor, in reality, you are often slighty behind you client’s position during play so if you were moving when hitting ZD, the shield will appear where your character actually is and in the direction you were facing at the time as opposed to where you are on the client-side.

Frankly, I hardly ever use meditations, this patch may change that since I do use fury.

I use sigils of speed even at level 80. I usually have close to permanent swiftness in pve.

Yeah man, I’m also passionate about Guardian and also run a supporty/bunker build. I agree that the mace is actually one of our most balanced weapons and has a huge amount of variability due to its many trait synergies.
It certainly is undeniable though that there are a couple of quality of life improvements that could really help the mace skills. Such as the third hit in the chain hitting three foes (not trigger the heal three times though), Protector’s Strike having a similar on-demand action on par with other profession’s counter-attack skills such as Warrior and Mesmer (possibly also Ranger). I’m fine with the symbol, the only other thing that irks me is that we hardly get any combo finishers outside of greatsword and hammer (I haven’t forgotten focus but it’s on a massive cooldown) and the one on mace is not only the worst type but is also the shortest possible of the worst type, it hardly ever procs anyway and if it does, it means you were standing there for three seconds not doing anything.

I never said it would be an amazing buff . You can’t deny that it’s certainly a buff, though…. in a playstyle that isn’t highly rewarded in this game.
If those leaked notes are correct it also appears that most minions (spirit weapons) will also be getting a hp boost. I’m going off memory here though so I could be wrong.

I do completely agree 110% that Zeal needs a good looking at.

FoopOplo: “Look at these fools with their <subjective opinions here>! Don’t they realise that <subjective opinion here>!?”

They are buffing Healing Breeze as well.

I’ve only recently incorporated Purging Flames back into my build, I’m glad to see it’s getting some love. I do hope we eventually get similar means of dealing with condition spam in other ways though….

I use mace all the time, it’s actually really, really good. I’d really prefer to use a sword but sword just doesn’t work with my build at all…

As far as main hand weapons go, mace easily has the most trait synergy. A stun would be nice though.

…if sword had a symbol I’d switch in a heartbeat.

If it’s going to be a combo finisher it should at least be a finisher regardless of whether you blocked an attack or not, you spin around either way.

With that in mind, having it as a blast finisher would be really nice, it wouldn’t make a huge amount of sense but unless whirl finishers get improved my vote is for blast.

Consumables
- I think the Plate of Truffle Steak Dinner or those dragon pie things fit the bill nicely but an alternative could be Truffle Steak.
- You can swap out the sharpening stones for a slaying potion if that’s how you roll.

General Play
- You want to get your bloodlust stacks up, obviously.
- Try to leap through Purging Flames or other fire fields whenever possible.
- It’s ok to save Shelter for when you know you’re going to take a lot of hits, timing that with leaping through fire fields will net you a good amount of might which will, in turn, increase your base damage, burns damage and retaliation damage.
- While I said dodge all the time, don’t waste dodges either.
- Swap weapons often, a double symbol drop in a group of allies is a lot of heals all around.
- Don’t be afraid to pop Shield of Absorption for emergency heals.
- It’s a very flexible build that you can/should be changing traits and weapons around to suit whatever situation you’re in.

Cons
- There isn’t as much condition removal as there could be, it might be a problem in WvW/sPvP at the moment, I run a variant of this build in sPvP that does well.
- While this build does what I’d say is a fair bit more damage than a full Cleric’s set, it still isn’t a damage build. It certainly excels at keeping your damage dealing buddies alive though!
- It’s a heals/support build in a game that doesn’t quite reward healing as much as damage.
- Players could probably be crawling and still get away from you.

I guess that’s all, really. If you’ve read this far, I love you.
I don’t really know why I’m putting this up here, I’ve found myself quite fond of this set up as it’s pretty much dead on my preferred playstyle so hopefully you’ll enjoy it too.

Hello everyone
I don’t know about you but this happens to me a lot, I’ll try out numerous high damage builds and while the damage is great, something just doesn’t sit well with me, I think it’s because I really like seeing lots of heals flying everywhere and that I like being some kind of stubborn, unbeatable fortress whilst fighting many foes at once. So while I’ve tried out numerous zerker builds, knight builds and whatever, I always find myself landing back on my trusty old (mostly) cleric’s gear and build.

Here’s a link to the build
http://gw2buildcraft.com/calculator/guardian/?3.3|9.1k.h1f.e.1k.h10.0.0.0|1.1g.h4.0.0.0|1k.71h.1k.71h.1k.71c.1k.71c.1k.71c.1k.71c|31l.e15.1k.9a.1k.9a.1k.9a.1k.9a.1a.9a|0.0.u56b.u3ab.a6|69.1|w.z.16.19.1j|e

It’s a fairly standard 0/0/30/30/10 build however, I feel I need to explain a few things:
- I use UK spelling.
- The idea is to stack up power a little via consumables, bloodlust and might here and there. It’s not maximum power/might stacking by any means.
- I don’t know if BuildCraft is taking into account 25 bloodlust stacks.
- You can use ascended gear if you like, I don’t have much yet because I couldn’t be bothered so I’ve run with what I’ve got. You may find it hard to get the same stat spread anyway (see next point).
- I’ve mixed some Magi’s gear/crests in there to sneak my precision up just a little, full Cleric’s just didn’t crit often enough for me to get a good uptime on Vigourous Precision but I didn’t want to skimp on healing power cause I like it I feel the very small drop in power was worth it.
- If you want less healing power, more damage and don’t mind losing a bit of health, you could always put rubies in the jewellery.
- The real kicker is in the runes, I used two water runes for the boon duration but the four rage runes plus all the boon duration bonuses gives me a 45 second fury pretty much on cooldown in pve, taking my crit chance to around 32% which isn’t bad for mostly Cleric’s.
- Dodge all the time, preferably into allies. Selfless Daring is amazing and Elusive Power has great synergy with it.

Traits
- The traits are, of course, quite flexible. If you’re happy with less crits, grab any other adept or master trait you like instead of Retributive Armour. Strength in Numbers, Mace of Justice or Honourable Shield are good choices. Be aware that you’ll have less vigour up time if you do so.
- Purity is a solid choice but if you wanted to play a more “I’ma blow Shelter just for the blocking” style, you could throw in Defender’s Flame instead.
- You don’t need Writ of Exaltation, you could take Superior Aria if you wanted faster shouts. Big symbols are great though
- Alternatively, if you prefer to play mostly with two handers, you could drop Writ of the Merciful for Two Handed Mastery but as this build is more about getting big heals, it’s probably best to keep Writ of the Merciful.

Weapons
- Aesthetically, I would love to use a sword on all my builds but the trait and gear synergy just isn’t there.
- I, personally, would keep mace/shield on one set and any two hander you like, I chose the greatsword because I like swords but the retaliation is a good source of supplemental damage when you have a good amount of bloodlust and might stacks running, which you will, especially if you leap through Purging Flames often.
- If you bring a staff, it might be better to also bring a greatsword or hammer.
- The water sigil on mace is optional, mace already heals a lot, change it to whatever suits your fancy, sigil of purity would do ok.
- The speed sigil on the shield is mostly to make up for mace’s lack of mobility, it’s actually quite nice having around 1.5 minutes of swiftness often (pve) but, again, change it to whatever you’re comfortable with, sigil of energy would be a good choice.

Utilities
- I was originally skeptical about Purging Flames but it’s turned out to be quite useful, leaping through it to get might on getting hit pretty much sold it but the extra burns and aoe condition removal are quite nice.
- If projectiles are a problem, swap Purging Flames out for Wall of Reflection.
- If CC is a problem, swap Hold the Line or Purging Flames out for Hallowed Ground.
- If you didn’t want to run any consecrations, you could run Signet of Judgement and then change Master of Consecrations to Vengeful. I’d stick with the consecrations though.

I usually always prefer a support melee type role and while everybody always complains about healing power, I’ve mostly run Cleric’s with a smidge of Magi upgrades here and there and it’s allowed a lot of the small group encounters my little guild does actually achievable. I may not do a lot of damage (although 4 runes of rage + 2 water is my new favourite! ) but I very effectively keep my allies alive so that they can continue doing their monstrous amounts of damage for longer than they would have been able to do otherwise. I’m also somewhat of a boon factory.

On your own, yes, healing power makes fights longer than they could be but with allies, I find it to be pretty amazing and even after reading through all the somewhat angry berserker gear related threads and even trying out some pretty amazing damage builds, I always land back on my trusty old Cleric’s gear.

When I see stunlock Warriors, if I haven’t done so already, I put Stand Your Ground and Hallowed Ground on my bar. In addition to technically reducing their damage gained by traits and countering them nicely, it also allows your allies to be CC immune as well. It’s been a game changer many times for me.

Edit: I also have 10 in virtues so I switch to Master of Consecrations in this case.

Yaki.9563:

How is the detonate anything like a blast? I can see some kind of argument for the skill itself but not the detonate.

Well… it is a detonatation. It certainly resembles a blast more than Warrior and Ranger’s warhorn 5 does…

The supply will be the people running around with at least 300% magic find.

I hadn’t thought of the detonate. Heck yes make that a blast.
If Shield of Judgement were an AoE weakness and/or a stun/daze, it would be pretty amazing. I think weakness fits better with the whole protecting others theme but that said, even with a hammer I feel kitten in terms of control when compared to other professions….

Edit: The shield combo field actually lasts longer than the graphics do, it’s actually the same duration as an untraited symbol, I believe. The problem is, blasting the shield would almost always combo the shield’s field unless they dropped it or made it so it doesn’t trigger itself.
All the ideas… if I don’t stop, I’ll end up making another sword thread again…

Are you saying shield 5 should be a blast finisher instead of a combo field or in addition to? Surely you meant instead of?
I think shield 4 could get away with being a blast finisher instead, why not have both?. I’m completely fine with adding more combo options to main hand weapons since we only really have one option (Protector’s Strike doesn’t count assuming it even goes off, it shoots out one bolt and it’s usually like… upwards.)
I still think Guardian is desperately lacking in the combo finisher department. Not everyone runs greatsword or hammer all the time.

I was just thinking about Guardian shield today, I do like the ol’ shield.
It’s pretty clear that Guardian shield is about protecting others whilst Warrior shield is about protecting the Warrior however, Guardian’s hammer is much better at applying protection than the shield anyway so I agree that this skill needs a little boost. Weakness would be amazing considering we don’t have any weapon skills that apply weakness although I’d even take just a longer protection duration considering the cooldown.

From what I can gather, I’ve not done it properly yet, most people just use completely full berserker’s with either full scholar runes or just ruby orbs for armour, sword + focus/staff for weapons and Wall of Reflection, Save Yourselves (optional), Bane Signet and Renewed Focus.
Then any old damage build should get it done for you.

I had marginal success with 10/20/30/0/10, mostly for Unscathed Contender but it might be better to go 25 in Radiance for a guaranteed +10% bonus over a most-definitely-not-guaranteed +20% bonus.

Has anyone ever played Wanderlust: Rebirth? I’ve not played it very much but I did notice something in that game that I totally loved. The Cleric class in Wanderlust is a little like the Guardian, a support melee fighter, however, they have a unique ability that turns any over-healing they do to an ally into aoe damage around that ally, probably affected by some ratio.
Wouldn’t that be freaking amazing on Guardians?!

Isn’t it funny how people write AH off as selfish but won’t write off any other trait that only affects themselves?

It rewards you for helping others with boons, you get healed for your ‘altruism’, hardly selfish. If it healed allies for every boon it would just get nerfed.

Signet of Judgement is actually quite amazing. The passive 10% reduction in damage actually is much better than you’re making it out to be but the real bonus of the signet is its active. It’s one of the very few means us Guardians have of applying area weakness, which is actually 50% less damage 50% of the time so, using bad maths, that’s 25% damage reduction! The extra retaliation on top of that means that say, in a pinch you get knocked down, five enemies are on you, you pop Signet of Judgement, you’re now on your feet, they’re all doing half damage to you and taking full retaliation damage for doing so. Definite fight winner in the right hands.

I just smashed her with my typical all Cleric’s build, 0/0/30/30/10. I used staff for phase one but you could really use anything, its pattern is the same every time so you can do it without even dodging.
Phase two, I tried to sneak as much of Empower off as I could, then pop Virtue of Justice for extra might then switch to greatsword and try to keep as much retaliation up as possible. I used the Greatsword symbol (if you can, leap through it too), Signet of Judgement, Save Yourselves and Stand Your Ground. You should also bring the Virtues II trait for 25% longer retaliations.
I didn’t even have a perfect run (at one point I had 1 hp!) and I managed to rally once or twice but the retaliation DEFINATELY ate her alive, her spin move is great to get hit by but her normal attack actually hits about four times each as well! Good luck everyone!

It doesn’t actually say that it reduces condition damage. It just says “damage” but I think it’s fair to assume that it is only referring to attack damage.

I use it all the time! I quite like it. A little bit of extra damage and a nice AoE heal. I run a pretty heavy support build though. Great for when I’m about to swap weapons too, I would have died hundreds of times in spvp without that detonate.

I like consecrations, for all of the betas and a good few months after release my utilities always included Wall of Reflection and Purging Flames.

Lately, especially with this insane condition meta in sPvP (I’m not really a hardcore PvPer but I do enjoy it) consecrations are essentially vacant from what I’ve seen (I still bring Wall of Reflection <3 ). Hallowed Ground actually works wonders but taking it in the place of Stand Your Ground + Pure of Voice can be a bit risky.

What I would like to see is Purging Flames remove a condition every second rather than once (or once every time you enter the fire field, which I consider a bug, personally). That gives us a nice fire field with a good cooldown, especially when traited that could easily remove 5-7 condition from allies and give Purging Flames a little more use. To be honest, for a while, I thought this was what Purging Flames originally did anyway! :O

Before people potentially get too up in arms about this suggestion, Well of Power.

As usual, Bash, a balanced and insightful read. Totally agree with pretty much everything there.

Like I’ve said in my sword threads and various other threads from months ago now, I’d be happy with a couple of simple cripples thrown in on weapon skills, none of this fancy chill stuff. I mean c’mon, if someone hits you in the leg with a weapon, you’re going to be walking funny. Guardians are the only profession that has extremely limited access to cripple yet is also extremely reliant on being in melee range, we all know it.

Since we’re throwing ideas around, while I really like the bleeds on Shattered Aegis idea (Guardians at least need some bleeds), an alternative could be aoe blind on aegis removal, imagine how annoying that would be! It would fit thematically, I know Thieves would hate it but what Thief really has the right to complain about blinds right? Additionally, Shimmering Defense could also do some kind of aoe blind, that’d be kinda nice. I’m just throwing out ideas and will not defend any of these suggestions outside of the cripples! So nobody get their undies in a twist about the Thief comment!

In any case, I am totally for making the Guardian profession the best it could be, as it stands I think fixing Zeal, fixing a few dud traits, adding a couple of weapon skill cripples and tweaking sword and scepter are the biggest concerns.

If you used a hammer, you could essentially spam symbols of protection and throw out large amounts of retaliation without even thinking much. Protection is one of the best boons for tanking. If you took Signet of Judgement and traited to make symbols heal allies, that’d be pretty tanky. You’d probably want to take the Altruistic Healing trait in addition to all those.
The hammer’s purpose is a lot of crowd control. You can wall enemies off rather well, send a particular one flying if you wish with an aoe line immobilise. Hammer most certainly isn’t a weapon where blindly mashing keys will make you win though. It’s best to save the #3, #4 and #5 skills for when they’re needed.

Mace and hammer have the spammiest symbols around so using Honour traits can really help you out with tankiness and support. Huge protection symbols that heal allies? Awesome.

I’m FA as well :S
Maybe it’s on a per game basis? I joined another game and the lag was ok-ish. Weird, it can be really annoying when I’m trying to get some achievement or another within a certain time frame and lag pretty much kills me every time.
Ah well…

For like six months or most likely more, I’ve not had ANY problems with lag in PvP and I’m from Australia, lag is our bread and butter but recently, especially if somebody fears me, I’m in like five places at once.
Weapon swaps are activating like 1-2 seconds after I press the swap button, some skills simply aren’t activating right, other skills miss entirely because by the time they activate, my target has moved out of LoS or something. It’s like two seconds on and two seconds off, then I die. I must be hilarious to fight against.

I understand how latency and ping work etc, is this simply just a problem with PvP servers being located in a far more geographically inconvenient place for me when compared to the PvE servers or is there some magical port I could forward or something? Could this just be a PvP server population thing? Is lag just hidden better in PvE? I really haven’t been zipping around like some kind of teleporting lag monster in PvE unless you count the aspect skills but I think they’re a whole other problem.

I really have zero problems with lag in PvE and only recently so in PvP. It’s almost unplayable for me as it stands. Which really sucks, I love removing all those millions of conditions the current meta brought along from my allies.

Any suggestions/solutions/thoughts?

I was having a small problem with a stun/confusion Warrior. I just brought Hallowed Ground. Problem solved.

It’s definitely something to do with the body type. For example, as a human male, choose the last body type and put the heavy plate shoulders on. You’ll notice they look stretched and crap. I had this body type before and aside from it looking kinda unrealistic, it made those shoulders and the radiant ones look odd so I used a total makeover kit and fixed it up. In fact, using the total makeover kit, you can directly see how body types affect the shoulder models.

This is what I was rockin’:
https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/u/1289341/Images/gw240.jpg

This is probably what I’ll be rockin’ when I get a few more achievements:
https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/u/1289341/Images/gw254.jpg

Disclaimer: This is not a strategy guide as to how to play the race, there’s plenty of those around, this is a guide on how to beat the glitchiness of the movement skills during the race.

If you’re like me, you’ve been wanting to hit things over the glitchiness of the movement skills in Sanctum Sprint (or the Bazaar) and subsequently wanted to post an angry letter on the forums about how the skills aren’t working the way they’re supposed to. After noticing plenty of those already, I decided to try and figure out why the skills fail so hard and cost me so many places. The problem, I believe, is due to latency.

Exhibit A: rudimentary diagram on how I understand the glitchiness working
https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/u/1289341/Images/SS.png

As you can see from the picture, it’s almost as if the ‘stop player’ event is executing on the server side just after the ‘jump’ event is executed on the client side, it then has to figure out which one is more accurate and then decides the server one is better, stops you in mid-air and you die a grizzly death.
You can also replace the ‘jump’ event with a few others, such as, ‘collides with wall’ or ‘falls off an edge’.

During Sanctum Sprint, every second counts, every failure essentially costs you places so it’s difficult to slow down. However, taking about half a second or less longer before using any of the skills has turned my game around from consistently coming last to consistently coming first (excluding crazy speed runners with no lag).

So here’s a quick little list of tips on playing and succeeding:
- Don’t use the jump skill whilst touching a wall
- Don’t use the jump skill or the sun skill when you know you’re about to hit a wall
- Don’t fall off an edge before the jump skill (or any other skill) activates
- Stop for about 400 milliseconds before using the Lightning Pull

That’s all I can remember, following those rules have led me to playing really well and I’ve even had a few flawless runs with me waiting about thirty or more seconds before the second player crossed the line.
I hope this helps you all

Edit: All that being said, I logged on today and the amount of lag was so intense that it just wasn’t worth doing so take my advice with a grain of salt.

I find the Human Tier 3 stuff to be quite Guardian-esque. Although it comes with pre-requisites….

I’m pretty sure the exact formula is what I mentioned earlier. Much the same as Necromancer’s Lich form. It’s a doubling or tripling of the base stats. It’s just not really mentioned anywhere!

If it’s any consolation, in the last patch, they made Smiter’s Boon and Protective Spirit affect the casting Guardian.

I quite like both tomes. I’m currently using Tome of Wrath.
It may not be immediately obvious to some people but Tome of Wrath triples your base power and doubles your base precision and vitality. Tome of Courage also boosts base stats but I can’t quite remember which offhand, probably healing power and vitality. I know these aren’t game changers for some people but it is nice to know.

Edit: Just to clarify, I tested it out.
Tome of Courage: 916 extra toughness and vitality.
Tome of Wrath: 1832 extra power, 916 extra precision and vitality.

Whoa at #15
I think this is a pretty sound list.

I would replace all the Zeal minor traits and merge their effects into the current symbol traits in Honour. I have no idea what I would replace them with….

A trait like, “5% of healing power becomes a bonus to power” somewhere certainly would be nice for my builds. I would say precision but I fear that would make a lot of builds too easy.

It was technically a bug all this time. It didn’t really make any sense that the non-ranged version took a second or so and the ranged one, which is arguably better (I think even duration-wise) would have a shorter cast time. I agree it sucks but it does make sense.

One thing is for sure, Warrior’s received what I would call a FREAKING AWESOME buff to sword while absolutely nothing was done to Guardian sword so at the very least, we won’t need to worry about people saying, “Yeah well you should see Warrior’s sword…”
To be honest, I was still jealous of the old Warrior sword skills since they had a cripple, a leap finisher, an immobilse and free bleeds, now they have an extra cripple and a really hard hitting spike skill on top of that.

Edit: Final Thrust also hits multiple targets. My Warrior is very happy. My Guardian is still kinda sad.

I’d be much more ok with ZD locking me in place if its effect was freaking awesome. It is a very effective skill defensively but offensively it’s a little crap. I still stand by my “hit foes in a line” idea for it or at the very least put a little homing on the projectiles.
Having it reflect projectiles is just a pipe dream but …….wouldn’t it be cool!?

I still think Sword Wave needs a complete rework and Flashing Blade needs to be a leap finisher.

I do enjoy the extra bit of projectile blocking on Zealot’s Defense which is mostly what I use it for, great on Young Karkas. Anyways, to add to my list of gripes about Sword Wave, it’s technically a melee attack that uses invisible projectiles so…. it’s like the only “melee” attack that can be reflected into your face. Most of sword’s bigger attacks are prone to reflection or projectile blocking. I wouldn’t usually have a problem with that but it’s a melee weapon…
As I’ve said before, I’d also really like it if Zealot’s Defense hit foes in a line, it would somewhat address sword’s lack of AoE effects, proc Justice like a mofo and give a lot of people more reason to use it over the auto attack. It would also make its awful idiosyncrasy of missing targets that move very slowly less of an issue in some cases as you’d at least be able to hit something else sometimes….
Having Zealot’s Defense reflect projectiles would be an interesting idea that I’d like, it’d make ZD somewhat devastating, really. At the very least, you know it would miss less because the projectiles would usually come from a profession that isn’t a Guardian
I dunno. I’ve said all this one hundred times by now I think….
I just want to use sword and be effective!!!