Interesting. Kinda feel bad for overlooking that detail :P. Welp, I’m still behind my argument.
Guardians and Eles are in the lowest health pool on their own, are they not? Was sure ranger, thief, mes, and engi shared their pool as well.
If you want guard to be a more skill based class, throw in some clutch CCs and other VIABLE options to deal damage.
We’re slow, have less HP than theives, have 200 more points of armor and absolutely NO way to consistently CC a target.
What do theives have? The best mobility in the game, more HP than a guardian, a little less armor, and a crapton of CCs.
What do guards do to survive? Cycle defenses that, under the right pressure, can be worn out. Don’t mention the healing on meditations because people don’t blow JI and CoP for the healing, RF has a 72 second CD and VoC has a 60? second CD. The only heal you’ll consistently see medi guards spamming is smite, when paired with shelter on the occasion for a 6k heal.
What do theives do to survive? Perma stealth/evade and constant CC with unlimited disengage potential.
You’re basing your arguments around bad vs bad. Please stop.
xx66x and full meditations are OK, although you can take 2 points from honor and put them elsewhere if you feel like you don’t need all that extra HP.
We should push for this definitely, but I find it odd that it didn’t work that way in the first place o-o. I suppose they would’ve never noticed if the community didn’t run after condi guard in the first place.
I am confused as to how people think guardians do not hard counter thieves.
I’m sorry but they do.
Now would I say nerf guard because of that? Besides toning down some of their survivability id keep it the same.
If you are losing to a power thief on a med guard you need to practice because its entirely your fault.
You must rarely play KotH, or hardly ever duel Good Thieves. They are devistating on fair 1v1 grounds.
^this.
I wanna know why this thread is going on? If we nerf guards because thief has a hard time vs them, we should nerf thief because mesmer has a hard time with them and nerf thief and mesmer again because rangers have a hard time with them and then nerf everyone because necro has a hard time vs them and basically nerf everyone down to a stick and auto attack, but then people would complain that asuras have a less visibile auto attack animation and nerf everyone so they look like humans and then people would complain about females having different swing animations making it confusing for new players and then everyone would complain that darker skinned human males blend better when naked in certain maps which would make everyone white and then people would complain that it red hair confuses them because it looks like a target and then they end up auto attacking team mates for nearly 5 minutes until the dude tells them they’re on the same team.
Do you now realize how dumb this argument sounds people?
1. Heals aren’t affected by healing power much, so ragging on about meditations healing too much should be applied to the rest of the meta classes.
2. Like a thief without intiative, a guardian without CDs (regardless of build) is practically dead, so if you want to ask for increased medi CDs, reduce initiative gain, adrenaline gain etc.
I’m going to go out on a limb here and guess that you’re a thief. You don’t like guardian, we get it, but you’re going to have to take that and deal with it.
Traited focus > traited any offhand.
I know how guardian works, but there IS such a thing as too little HP. Regardless of your toughness, you’ll never live long enough to do anything of note to anyone, even a thief. You want to talk about active defenses but aren’t running the two biggest active defense tools available to guardian AND you’re running with 10k HP. On the note of active defenses, you’ll rarely find stats like toughness and and healing power making much of a difference (although tooooo little toughness could pose as a problem) to a guardian.
First of all, that 4.5k through traps and blocks is unattainable in any realistic setting. Personally, I’m predicting 1-2k burn stacks in short bursts since (when specced for) I’m assuming base burn will be around 3-500 (for carrion users with AW). If torch 4 continues to work as is, 3 stacks = 900-1.5k easily, not counting any blocks. Base is 3 seconds so you’re now looking at 2.7-4.5k every 15 seconds alone (assuming you take the immob on justice trait vs the torch trait).
Second of all, I believe thanks to the ridiculous buff to radiance and how a third traitline can be taken, I can see ridiculous radiance/honor/virtues or radiance/valor/virtues, or even radiance/honor/valor builds running around outshadowing zerkers (ye I said it >:U). As long as these super sustain cele builds don’t exist, I’m fairly certain the meta will open up really nicely.
That being said, I think we could get a hybrid guard to work really easily without the valor line and I’m, personally, looking forward to radiance/honor/DH just to maximize that amount of immob and burn we can get our hands on (that pure of sight trait isn’t too bad either).
(edited by SlayerSixx.5763)
5% of a 2k heal would be 100hp. 5 players all spamming 2k heals is 500hp. Not gamebreaking, but makes a big difference when they’re all doing their own blocks/heals + the extra kitten. Also, they don’t HAVE to stand next to each other. They could call out burst heals and like BOOM, live forever. I’m not against it because this would take some serious teamwork and honestly, if they can co-ordinate heals so well they certainly could co-ordinate anything else to similar effect.
Not arguing btw, just imagining the possibilites :P.
If I’m not running travler runes, I usually choose between pack and krait depending on what I feel like doing with the build. I take doom over geo even though the DPS would be higher because of cover conditions and the beautiful part of poison wrecking sustain (the only “counter” aside from cleanse). The build, as a guildy so eloquently stated, plays like a ranger. As long as I’m not 1v3, I have a good chance of quickly nuking the target down and going on the defensive until my CDs come back up (krait definitely helps with this). chains>smite>flame toss + scep auto/CF usually shreds thieves/mesmers/rangers with ease, although killing a shoutbow in any reasonable amount of time is out of the question. A meta ele CAN be nuked, but you’d have to really get yo kite on, which is part of the reason why I run traveler runes.
In terms of outdamaging zerkers in melee range, that isn’t an issue. sw/f stacks so much vuln that you eventually find there to be almost no difference in overall damage except for the fact that you just keep getting stronger while they keep doing no damage (nothing sweeter than facing a lich/rampage down, amirite?). I prefer my build over yours because I feel like I’m more active in my gameplay, but we’re all running the same build more or less so its all flavours.
Personally, with the build I have in mind, I can see condi guards becoming reallllllly viable when HoT drops.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Public_relations
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Propaganda
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Corporate_propaganda
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Non-disclosure_agreement
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Illuminati
4 out of 5 of these are useful to answer your question.
Illerminutty cunfurmed.
Yea, you’d have full cleric/cele comps. Make it so the guardian has perma swiftness and call out when you’re about to heal. Literally the craziest amount of sustain ever. Imagine a mid fight with a cele staff bombing the point and blasting aoe heals while the guardian and shoutbow just rofltank the entire team while they have the luxury of sending a whole two players to rotate around far and home.
This is a fun build that I have already messed around with now and will definitely mess around with when the trait rework drops. So what this build basically does is take your average burn guardian build and add in a very important addition to your damage at the cost of 200 burn ticks. You probably haven’t touched the link and are now wtfing about where all this burn went. Simple, we’ve gained a crapton of crit. The problem with your 60611 burn guardian is that power is basically useless without precision/crit change. Of course, some of this is alleviated with the high fury uptime, but it just doesn’t cut it sometimes. You NEED to be able to crit outside of fury. With this build, you REALLY need to pace your meditations out (thanks to the fact that you don’t need to crutch on JI to do burst reliably). Alot of your time will be spent rocking the sc/t and swapping to sw/f when you absolutely need to meaning that you can pewpew from outside the fight for a bit picking off glass and/or softening up the guy you want to drop. Sw/f is very similar to the meta usage, with the exception that you can spam your blinds for a whole kittenton of vuln (you can rack up around 12-14 stacks very quickly). Not running meditation mastery might be a tad bit difficult, but the added dps of all the burn you’ll proc while blocking should even things out (its very easy to punish mesmers, rangers, and thieves regardless of range). If you like the build now, just know that the trait rework is going to absolutely demolish your pants as you forcefully evacuate your bowels as you experience this amazingness.
http://gw2skills.net/editor/?fVAQRArf8dlsApcodDxaI8DRh/Qkj1FTB4cd25HA-TZRFwAAeCAx3fIxBBAaZAEnAAA
Any thoughts, Saiyan?
I don’t know man. I like shield and mace together. They seem to be made for each other. Do we have stronger weapons? For sure. Can these two weapons take a good tweaking? Hell yes, but I wouldn’t discount them entirely.
As man said, its good until you face players who can interrupt your kitten (see engis, theives, and mesmers). If you’re fine trying to find LOS everytime you want to heal, then its far more powerful. Problem with it is that guardian, by design, was meant to be the first dude in and the last dude out and shelter only increases your survivability in team fights even more (imagine being able to tank 5 players for 2 seconds as opposed to trying to heal and then getting wrecked by an interrupt and all the added dps). Theoretically, shelter heals for more since you usually aim to heal AND block a serious burst.
@OP
Don’t worry if you enjoy litany as a heal. When the trait rework drops, litany will get a serious buff if you like being ultra aggressive. Also, I’m not sure if having 12k HP and no condi cleanse is a smart idea :P. Aside from that, it seems like you’re trying to tank with this build but do damage but I don’t see either happening VS a competent player. Offensively, you have enough precision and enough ferocity, but you have very little power. You’ve tried offsetting that lack of power with a bit of burn from your torch, but you’ve given up too much for too little. Back to the guardian’s imagine of being the fight and staying there, 12k HP is far too little and what with your lack of focus or shelter, any raw DPS or even cele builds will totally stomp on you. A build like this MIGHT work on warrior since they’ve got more HP and, generally, stronger weapons, but I’m not too keen on this one with guard.
But lockdown mesmer is getting a buff lol. How about making chill act like slow on a thief? A thief without initiative is dead. Or make it so that it affect initiative regen, but give them better condition cleanse out of stealth.
I never asked for more damage though. I asked if they could make it easier to use. Keep all of the effects and shorten the channel and keep the damage. Maybe even have it cleanse you in the process so you can get some of the benefit yourself. Every skill CAN be improved to be better, but this skill has some major useability issues. I disregard the cleansing especially (and the damage to a certain extent) because of how hard it is to freaking chase down some of your more mobile team mates/enemies.
The problem with the skill is that its far too easy to counter because of how kitten ed slow it is. Those NINE pulses are the exact reason why the skill is so kitten ed cumbersome. You, running in circles in the middle of a mid fight, trying to cleanse team mates/deal damage will either get focused so easily or simply get nothing noteable done in the four seconds. In that four seconds, you could’ve gotten off two sword autos, which procs more burn and has better cleave with almost the same range all while being much easier to use with more damage. The only thing the flame does that the sword auto doesn’t is cleanse conditions and guess what your team mates already have craploads of? The shield already provides defensive support for allies (albeit not without its own quirks). The focus already provides defensive support for yourself. The torch needs to fill the spot of offensive offhand and right now, only one skill is worth anything on its set. They need to either remove the condi cleanse and cut the channel time down by at least a second or two or completely rework the skill because, as I’ve already stated and I’m sure any comptent guardian will agree, we’ve given up too much person benefit for some lackluster support that was forced onto us.
Listen, if you want to remain adamant in your belief that this skill is completely fine as it is and that everyone needs to L2P, that’s fine. If you want to simply back out because you’ve found already incredibly niche (that I’m very certain everyone already knows about) uses for the weapon, that’s fine. No one is forcing your replies and frankly, I’m really interested in seeing these skills of yours in action. I’m just worried that ANET will take your comments seriously and not tweak glaring flaws in this (among other weapons as well) skill which would seriously set us back, at least in comparison to the other classes.
Attacking enemies in stealth:
- Either the player teleports out (stealth classes tend to be mobile, no?)
- Or the player takes the pitiful damage you’re dealing because, well, its pitiful.
Attacking through terrain:
- Using a bug to validate why the skill doesn’t need a tweak, nice.
Cleanses while you deal damage:
- Doesn’t cleanse you and no one stays still long enough for the cleanse to take place. Jeez, stop repeating that point like its worth anything.
Assisting with stomps:
- Condis aren’t what make stomps so difficult to secure in high level play (well, maybe the necro fear can throw a wrench in your plans, but not for very long).
Range damage outside of melee:
- You’ve actually hit someone with the tips of the flames on this skill? Mad props to you man.
If ZD is on CD, you can auto attack your target…? Cleansing flame has a max range of only 100 more than the sword’s auto (sword’s auto has much better cleave and procs VoJ more reliably).
You don’t burn a target using shelter. They use shelter in your burn. See how that works?
I came up with the most basic and most common scenarios because…well, they’re the most common. No one is going to sit there and take your incredibly drawn out channel. Those are the most basic counters I could come up with and the only class I have any (decent) experience on aside from guard is ele.
Comparing rapid fire, easily one of the strongest skills, to this..?
No problem, lets do it.
What’s rapid fire’s range? 1200 (1500 with traits and even more if you use terrain right).
What’s cleansing flame’s range? 400 (technically 300, since you won’t be getting any hits off past that point).
What’s rapid fire’s damage (assuming best ranger build)? Nearly 6k+ (not counting sigil procs).
What’s cleansing fire’s damage (assume zerk, since burn guard is iffy at best)? Nearly 4k+.
Which skill is easier to land of the two? You don’t see people complaining about wanting CF to be nerfed so……….enough said, I suppose.
I know that you don’t have to stay still, but you’re slowed to such a glacial-like pace during a fight that you may as well be rooted. Guardians are notorious for being ultra slow and having an ultra slow skill is exactly the opposite of what we need. There’s absolutely no way you can keep up with teleports, swiftness, and leaps when channeling this skill and if you burn JI in order to connect this skill when you have at least 2 other MUCH better options, then you’re doing something wrong.
It is less damage than an auto attack chain and at the same time, the support application of the skill is dodgy at best. Sweep the fire over multiple targets and do how much damage? 2-300 if you’re a zerk and less if you’re anything else. Enemies outside of melee can already scepter-strafe while backpeddaling (not that any serious player actually backpeddals). By your logic, shield would be a better choice AND it provides better support options than torch.
https://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Might_of_the_Protector
20+ with strength runes and no bonus from virtues.
Assuming you’ve just taken a chains and smite as this individual is dropping their torch 5, it isn’t that big of a stretch to assume that you can get 9+ stacks of might with ease during your shelter. If you’re just randomly popping this skill without any prior setup, then you’re doing it wrong. If you’re running sword with this, ZD would be better in almost every situation with better utility, more damage, and a lesser channel time.
Learn to utilize > learn to play > you are bad. Its not that far of a leap, honestly. People are crying about a skill they’re using NOW, not something they’ll eventually get so comparing this discussion to the one you had in whatever thread about DH is weak. People aren’t complaining about the damage or the secondary utility. They’re complaining about its useability. How on earth can someone get this skill to work without outside lockdowns or quickness?
Don’t drop a video, fine, but could you go out of your way to illustrate situations where this skill would work vs a competent player of equal skill.
Theres literally no way this skill would be utilized in a non-1v1 situation, so don’t give me any of that. I’m comparing only damage because everyone and their grandmother has their own ways of cleansing conditions and rallying around the guardian for a cleanse is asking to be aoe-bombed.
Also, I’m honestly curious. Maybe you know of ways on how to use it that I and a majority of the guardians asking for a tweak to obvious flaw don’t. Is asking for a quick 5 minute video too much to ask for, or are you just going to keep calling the rest of the guardian community bad for not being able to make this broken skill work?
Pick up traveler runes if you find guard to be too slow. I can imagine how painful it must be to watch sword go up and down on a point before you’re even capable of getting there, so stick to roaming between mid/home. Rushing far shouldn’t even be on a secondary checklist (unless its obvious your team has won the match and you’re just messing around).
If you’re running around in pugs, don’t use the hammer. Not enough co-ordination to warrant the difficulty involved. You usually want to focus the squishies and faster classes in a brawl since you can usually flash out of nowhere and shred them before they even know what happened. Basically, you want to behave like a thief who is a bit slower and can actually take a hit so don’t be afraid to roll around dealing damage after your initial burst (be wary of when you might get overwhelmed).
If your target can see you before you’ve bursted, immediately run with your second weapon set first, since most people are waiting to foil your main burst.
Aside from that, keep your combos fresh and you’ll find that you’ll never struggle VS ANY class (yes, even d/d ele).
Why not just get rid of it and create a truly useful trait.
For instance
“Protectors Compassion” X% of all healing received is shared with nearby allies. (400 unit range)
Could be 5-7% since its an adept. Or they could put it in a master slot and bump empowering might down a row.
Or they could just tie elusive power into it like jax says.
This would stack really well with FoW, but wouldn’t this be a little too strong with AH and a shoutbow or two :o?
Sir, I believe you’ve never honestly faced good players. Torch 5 is impossible to land and any time when you CAN land it, there would be a million skills that are way better in that same situation. Team mates never stay still long enough for your flames to actually hit them (same issue I can see with healing breeze), enemies can literally walk away from you and you’ll experience a serious loss in dps with that skill.
Also, we already have enough support as it is. We need to stop being forced to give up personal viability for some super weak support. This is just plain dumb. Personally, I’d be cool if we could also cleanse conditions for ourselves as well.
Yes, lets go to insults, and then claim that its impossible to land a 400 range cone attack that lasts for 4.5 seconds…. But please, continue.
A 400 range cone attack. Interesting. Let’s talk about simple counters I can come up with off the top of my head assuming target is running meta.
Warrior: Let’s be honest, there’s no amount of burst that can force a shoutbow into spamming shouts for their heals in a 1v1 unless you’re a thief.
Ele: lol drakes breath and then out heal.
Ranger: gs>block>knockback>swoop>bear slam
Thief: staying still and trying to hit thief with a channel? come now, lets be serious.
Mesmer: phase retreat/daze shatter/gs knockback/blink
Engi: staying still and trying to hit engi with a channel? come now, lets be serious.
Guardian: shelter (thanks for the 10 stacks of might)
Necro is probably the only class that can’t give you the finger, but even then, they could still exploit your hilariously weak channel and burn application by spamming lifeblasts on a stationary target.
This skill has a much longer channel than HB’s with less than half the damage. I honestly don’t know what magical world you’re in that allows you to fully utilize this skill on human players. I would’ve also brought up other popular non-meta builds and how they’d counter it, but that’d be unneccesary as my point has been proven.
How about this then. If you wouldn’t mind enlightening the rest of the guardian community, give us a quick video of you in a pug where you use this skill to its full effect. You could even bring a friend or two to help you lock the target down or w.e you feel is neccessary for you to demonstrate the hidden potential of this skill.
Sir, I believe you’ve never honestly faced good players. Torch 5 is impossible to land and any time when you CAN land it, there would be a million skills that are way better in that same situation. Team mates never stay still long enough for your flames to actually hit them (same issue I can see with healing breeze), enemies can literally walk away from you and you’ll experience a serious loss in dps with that skill.
Also, we already have enough support as it is. We need to stop being forced to give up personal viability for some super weak support. This is just plain dumb. Personally, I’d be cool if we could also cleanse conditions for ourselves as well.
I suppose elusive power is probably the easiest fix if we actually want them to do anything for the adept honor without “extensive” testing.
ANET, MAKE IT SO.
Hey, I simply assumed he was talking PvP. I didn’t know people actually took PvE seriously lol. Hammer is meta not just because some good players did well with it, but because it makes more sense in an organized team environment. Making the comparison between sword and mace and saying that the dps lost is neglible is also stupid. You have to take into account that sword offers higher mobility (a freaking teleport with a blind), more reliable burst and a better auto attack. People don’t take hammer for the damage by the way, toots. All of these “dps” scenarios are against stationary targets if I’m assuming correctly and if thats the case, literally ANYTHING would work. Hell, if you wanna talk PvE DPS, spam spirit weapons with tome of wrath with a full power build. Can’t get more guard dps than that.
Also, if you think that hammer’s auto is “fair and balanced” then you’re the reason why we aren’t getting everything fixed.
Have you gentlemen ever actually hit one target for the full amount of hits and dealt the maximum amount damage without somone CCing the target for you? I mean, you could use chains, but I prefer smite over cleansing flame (although stacking both with the new burning changes and mad king runes sound absolutely evil). That aside, channel skills (aside from the ridiculously easy to use ranger LB2) usually get you nowhere vs competent players and some specs actually punish you very thoroughly (see medi guard, anything with retal, any spec based off of whipping out craptons of damage in single hits -cough-reaper-cough-, etc.). No one said the skills couldn’t be made to work, but they need some serious optimization because theres simply too much fat attached to these skills.
That’s the thing though, since I’m not sure we have any boon that cannot be shared. ICD sounds better, so we don’t just insta crap out every boon on the planet with SY.
(edited by SlayerSixx.5763)
^I like that idea, but wouldn’t it be too strong for the adept spot? I’m guessing master and then moving another master trait down to take its place. Would it work for only boons that affect you, or boons that you already share meaning that you technically apply more of the same boon (think empower sharing 13-14+ might instead of 12). If it is that way, it would stack ridiculously well with AH and make the support guard really viable.
What PvP guardians really need is mobility. We’re fine in every other respect.
I don’t really know mesmer all that well, but what you did to that thief was just mean.
Boiwatusayin? Hammer is meta lol. Maybe not in combination with GS, but hammer is part of the meta guard build.
Well then. That changes everything in my books then. ANET said there are another two specializations incoming in the future? Augh, I’ve missed so much.
Definitely. We already have two supportive/defensive off-hands so if they remove the condi cleanse, but made the duration shorter and the damage higher so it’d wouldn’t be harder to pull off than a HB on a non-cced target, that’d be nice. To be honest though, I would really like it if it wasn’t a multi-hit skill. Multi-hit skills are just so much more of a pain to use at higher levels.
OH, I HAVE A GREAT IDEA.
-insert cool fire related name here-
1200 range burst of flame that does half the damage of zealot’s flame with half the burn duration that blinds targets that aren’t on fire, but strips three boons (and blinds) if it hits a target that is currently burning. The time it takes to use the skill needs to half the burn duration of zealots flame so its actually possible to use the skill’s benefits on your own. It gives guardians something they don’t have (boon strip) and partially bolsters our defenses (you can quickly toss it to blind a target if you can’t wait to setup the boon strip combo). It’ll make the -torch CD trait even more worth it.
While they’re at it, can they make Thieves NOT steal a skill that provides a daze, which is something that Guardians don’t even have access to with their entire skillset? Thanks.
^this.
I want ANET to give us a fourth virtue that increases mobility by 15% and has an active that grants swiftness if they’re talking base profession changes.
I’ll (still) agree that the adept honor traits could use a decent amount of reworking, but to say that the entire tree is weak is wrong. I know for a fact that I’ll enjoy the tree when I’m tryharding (not using shouts) because I can now take EM and FoW without penalty now. What with purity of body being made into a minor trait, we’ll have tons of dodge rolls which just means we can drop even more defense for offense which is too sweet.
Also, iirc, honor was meant to be a defensive/supportive tree. They’ve already given us increased heals from FoW, increased toughness from SiN, more dodge rolls from PoB, VoC recharge when you rally or help an ally rally which would stack very nicely with protective reviver’s bonus, the bonus from the adept minor in virtues, the bonus from the master minor in virtues all stacking to give you craploads of protection, aegis, retal, regen all at once after ressing which is facilitated by the bubble blocking projectiles and the stab you get from the virtues line which, in some cases, can be a very viable backup to banner or even straight up compete (imagine having a team mate getting focused and you collapsing on their body to res them,knocking them back and crippling them as you’re unable to be stopped, while dropping a bubble that allows your team mates to hide in and pew pew and then you vomiting out stability, protection, aegis for your team mates and even more for you and your fallen team mate). Can you see why this would be an amazing alternative? Team mates WILL die in any given fight, especially when both sides are equally skilled. Why focus on something that bolsters your already easy PvE experience? You already get enough damage from zeal, radiance, valor, and even DH, so what you recommend they put in place of the current honor adept traits? What do you think guard can get that they don’t already have? Well, we could probably get a swiftness on crit, but swiftness AND vigor on crit would be a little crazy.
Raw Damage
Virtues/Valor/DH – Meditations Hammer/Bow
Valor/Virtues/Honor – Zerk & Soldier runes. (switch CoP out for “Retreat”)Condi Damage
DH/Radiance/Virtues – Bow/Sc – If Permeating Wrath changes to “on target”.
Radiance/Virtues/Valor – Sce/Foc + sw/tor. Just Smite and sword#3 will offer 7+ burn stacks.
Doesn’t DH replace the virtues line? If it doesn’t then hooooooooooooooooooooooly kitten, stuffs about to get real.
Why are you guardians defending the OP? DEATH TO THIEVES >:U. BURN IN MY BRILLIANCE.
How on earth can a GSless reaper be more optimal than a LBless DH? Complaining that DH doesn’t cater to non-LB users is as stupid as complaining that zeal doesn’t cater to symbol-less players, or valor not catering to meditation-less or boon-less players. Every tree has its “idea” or “feel”. You want to go against the design, then by all means go ahead, but don’t complain that ANET isn’t catering to your style of play. Its like complaining that the current condi-guard isn’t really super viable, even though its obvious that ANET never intended for the players to try rolling the class and use condis.
Technically, there is no “uber skill” guardian build, at least in relation to the other classes. You spend your time basically auto attacking and blocking/blinding in between your own damage bursts.
That being said, my recommendation for “uber dueling” for guard would still be 61610 with zerk instead of carrion, while taking fiery wrath, focus and scepter related traits in the zeal line. As for valor, the usual meditation traits. As for the utilities, the usual, except you swap contemplation of purity for bane signet. As for runes, I use pack, but you can swap for traveler if you’re fine with dropping some power for some mobility. For sigils, you take fire and rage.
Now, on paper, condi builds would demolish you, except you have 2.5k power without might. You’ll have to end engagements IMMEDIATELY which isn’t hard at all when you can open for nearly 10-12k WITHOUT procs (heavy golem dies instantly). With focus mastery, you can be more liberal with your SoW (use your head and don’t burn it jumping into the center of a group fight). If you’re going tete a tete with your target and NOT ambushing them, open with scepter (which does a crapload of damage on its own) and burst at your discretion. Cool part about this build is that if you’re in range, you can burn the signet’s active to whirl again without having to worry about them running out of range (be sure to use it AFTER they’ve burnt stun breakers). Nothing but raw zerk damage and, in my opinion, requires for you to be as sharp as you possibly can be.
As for how this fares against meta is up to you. You’ve got the burst to shred everything but a shoutbow in the first 60 seconds, but you’ve only got smite condition to defend yourself against their conditions, so be ready to either go hard or go back to spawn.
Mace symbol + symbol heal trait + vor = healing signet for 6 seconds which can be spammed like crazy mid fight while blocking, dodging and generally not dying and would make denying points really easy. If anything, honor and mace is going to be like dragonhunter and lb.
thats fine an all, but like Zxaviar said, the line should be able to sync w/ more than just mace users. if u aren’t using mace, the adept honor traits are just a waste
I’ll agree that the adept honor traits are pretty slim in terms of the pickings and need to be looked at but non-mace users can pick protective reviver which, on its own without any valor/DH trait synergy, is already amazing in terms of support.
GW2 DOES support duels if you’re good at rotating, which is hard for a class as slow as guard.
As for the OP’s request, the meta builds are generally for team play which is something you won’t have to worry about as a guardian since you’ll, like, always be in the thick of things. For duel builds, the best (easiest) duel build is probably 60611 condi with carrion amulet and krait runes. You’ll be a walking torch with this build. Any other zerk build has probably existed for a very long time and can probably be found on metabattle.
(edited by SlayerSixx.5763)
Turret engis think damage should be toned down so they can go back to afking and talking to their friends on FB while they “earn” top 10 on the leaderboards.
Mace symbol + symbol heal trait + vor = healing signet for 6 seconds which can be spammed like crazy mid fight while blocking, dodging and generally not dying and would make denying points really easy. If anything, honor and mace is going to be like dragonhunter and lb.
My only salt is towards the hammer/scepter autos and how terribad SW3 is. SW3’s issue is going to be partially fixed with the trait rework, but the hammer and scepter autos really need some work.
I’m going to fully embrace the DH trait line. I think alot of the game and its functions are going to take a crazy change come HoT. The current meta we have now may not even be recognizable after this. Personally, I’m seeing ANET finally take a step away from the jack of all trades cele BS that’s been dominating PvP.
That being said, I’ll be running a DH/Valor/Honor build and am going to replace one of my meditations with a trap and if changes are in line with what I have in mind, I’m fairly certain that this build will destroy (not a hybrid) with either GS or Hammer while paired with LB.