Guild Wars 2

Litany of Wrath: Reduced the cast time from 1 second to 3/4 second.

Won’t matter, still won’t use it, unless it becomes instant. It will just set on the shelf

While i agee that no set will be perfect for both havoc and zerging until i get enough time to craft a third set of ascended i will be using my ascended or using an exotic set when I need soldiers.

human, Enough Said

I just decided to go Clerics. I don’t command and even in exotic cleric’s gear I am usually the last one in my havoc/zerg to fall. But in my experience that is usually the case with Guardians. Set number three will be soldiers, though, I am certain on that.

Applied Fortitude is generally giving me enough extra hp to stand tall as I bash my way though the enemy zerg.

I don’t think the issue is that the Fractal is undo able as it. There are strategies which can be used to make it easier. That being said it, the dredge fractal is not “fun.” And with the most recent changes to how fractals are encountered it means this one shows up alot more then it used to, and we don’t get the option to reset it if we just don’t feel like doing it like we used too.

I don’t like this fractal, its not fun. I can do it with a Guild group, or I can Pug it. But that is not and will never be the point. I don’t find it fun at all. Its long, way to long.

It wouldn’t be so bad if the Clown Car would just die along with the boss. But I don’t expect this fractal will change. If anything good was gonna happen to it, it would have been done during that big fractal update.

I will try to draw attention to this for the last time. Perhaps it might even do some good.

For the Guardian one of our best DPS weapons is the Sword. It is fast and we can put out some decent damage with it when rotated with our Greatsword. However no matter which area I am using it in, I find that I am faced with the same problems.

What we have now:

Auto 1: Sword of Wrath: Slash your foe once. This skill cleaves.

Auto 2: Sword Arc: Slash your foe again. This skill cleaves.

Auto 3: Sword Wave: This skill unleashes 3 piercing projectiles that hit up to 5 foes. These can be reflected back in our face. The are also pron to miss or fire off in the wrong direction despite facing target and being locked on.

Flashing Blade: Teleport to your target, striking them and blinding nearby foes. 3 Seconds of Blind for up to 5 foes.

Zealot’s Defense: Block ranged attacks while casting magical projectiles. Movement interrupts channeling. Projectiles aimed at the player are absorbed, and on-block don’t work with it. Does not absorb itself should it be reflected

The main point here as a quality of change would be to adjust Auto attack 3: Sword Wave and Zealot’s Defense

To make Sword Wave better, perhaps as a cleaving attack that hits up to 5 targets as we have now rather then the three bolts of light. Its quite annoying to be running a fully zerked guardian (given how little health we have) and have one of our heavy attacks bounced right back in our face for no reason.

Zealot’s Defense is the most little used skill on the sword, it does less damage then the Auto Attack chain and provides little real benefit. I would like to see the Root in place removed or the function of this trait changed completely, perhaps even to a block or parry counter thrust.

Both of these attacks are projectile but don’t gain anything from projectile combo finishers. As it stands I like this weapon alot. But its hard to love a weapon that causes as many problems as it fixed. It can be a real frustration to play a dps Guardian with out our weapon acting up.

Every one is so spoiled on this whole Dye thing. If you recall in Guild Wars 1 you had to buy a set of dye for each piece of gear. You wanted to dye your Armor black? Well that will be six Black Dye. Want to dye it white, then go back to black? Well that will be six more black dye. Be thankful its “unlockable” at all and that you don’t need one Abyss dye for each piece of gear.

As much as I would agree with this on some levels. there is a problem that HP alone doesn’t combat. That is the underlying theme of this game in general. To see this one only needs to look at Guild Wars 1 vs Guild Wars 2.

We had a dedicated healer role. This allowed for balance in other classes. The Elemenetalist in Guild Wars 2 is a pale imitation of what we had in the first game. Why? Its not really because of the base health, it is instead because Guild Wars 2 is not a group based game.

In Guild Wars 2 every job needed to be able to wander PvE on their own. So that means everyone needed some kind of healing skill. Granted some skills have better ones then others.

I remember playing an Air elementalist in the original Guild Wars and spiking everything and one down in PvP. This was balanced cause if that warrior I just spiked got on top of me, they were gonna rip me apart.

Changing Base HP would possibility help. But we need alot more to balance out things.

Yes, it is bad. I wouldn’t consider using it unless it was instant, combined with Judge’s Wrath and Monk’s it “might” be useful on a mediation build. But intruth I wouldn’t expect much from it. Guardian’s have gotten little in the way of positive improvement since we were considered OP during the beta…..maybe someday….

I am about to craft my second set of Ascended armor. My first was Zerker for PvE. My second set is gonna be for WvW. I have usually up until this point ran With a full Clerics set, and I am strongly leaning that way now. Now the debate as to which set of armor would be the most help. Is Sentinels worth it on a guardian, I have heard mixed feelings about this.

I have been theory crafting for a while, and its making my head hurt. Any thoughts on which of these would be the most beneficial in the long run for havoc and Zerg War.

Oh, and I do tend to change my build alot to suit my mood. So this isn’t so much a build question as a over all stat discussion.

Instance it, if I really wanted to play with PuGs I would use the LFG tool. I have a good guild that’s all I need. I think my server has put in enough work to make the bad system work. Between our TS and Commanders, we do pretty well with this type of content. However its a flawed system at best.

What is usually one of the worst experiences in any mmo? Why running with a PuG cause we never know what we are getting into…. so why are we doing some of the hardest most coordinated fights with 100+ PuGs? That just has problems written all over it.

It should be instanced. I understand people want world bosses open. However from the other side, I hate being stuck with PuGs. And that is all that we really get when we are doing a world boss, that requires tactics. It would be better if we could control the instances. Just like when Word went out that we Killed Teq, we had even larger ques as everyone tried to crowd our Server to get those kills rather then trying to learn to do it themselves.

I don’t like relying on players I don’t know, when there is a factor of skill involved. Or at the very least knowing what is expected of them.

Hit up one of the T one servers. Usually it is hard to find one that is not contested. Well other then balth and that one is fifty-fifty

runeblade.7514:

They would need to rebalance cripple for that then. Almost every profession have spammable, or long duration cripple.

Said no guardian ever. Soft crowd control. What is that?

We need an expansion. Even a die hard like me is getting tired of the same content. The living story is all well and good, BUT there has to be some things added that stay. I don’t mean a few cosmetic changes here and there. I mean a new map or a new city. I see no reason why the Zephyr Sanctum had to be completely removed. They could have removed the Airship and left the rest of the city as someplace to explore. The sad part of this all is that we want something more to do.

I know its not easy if half the population Buys one expansion and the other half doesn’t but at the rate we are going there might not be any of us left by the time the expansion finally comes.

I wouldn’t get my hopes up about any change. I would Just be happy if Sword Wave was no long considered a projectile. Seems rather dumb to stick a projectile on the auto attack of a melee weapon, and it serves no purpose. Other then having it reflected back in my face ever so often by something.

The other day I realized I couldn’t even knock down those annoying poison trees in fireheart rise, sure the first two attacks worked, but number three missed every time. And No I don’t recall why i was trying to kill the thing.

Toss me me an Invite, be fun kill him again

Evalia.7103:

Its better to be a specialist then a generalist. Soldiers and Clerics, of the two I run clerics more its about team play. There is no place for the lone cowboy approach in Tier 1 if you want to do it right. The team that has the best synergy will always have the advantage.

Edit: After thinking about it, the only piece of gear I would get with these stats is my back piece, only then because an ascended back item tends to be a little bit more of a kitten to get then others to get.

Actually, the Celestial backpiece is the worst piece of Celestial Gear and should be the first one to be swapped out if you want to specialize(that should change with the patch, though).
If everybody only ran healing power, you’d never be able to kill anyone. Being a Support is not the only way you can work with other players, now imagine that. Damage saves lives too.

I main Elementalist and I never recommend anyone to run full celestial armor and Ele’s can use all of those stats much better then a Guardian.

Care to elaborate the difference? I mean, If you are using Staff, forget the condition damage. Guardian benefits more from it then, lol. If D/D, then yeah, healing is about the same, actually even a bit stronger on guardian I think. And I don’t really get the whole idea of condition damage being horrible on guardian – Binding Blade acts as a second condition, so you essentially have 2 of them, which isn’t that horrible as people make it seem.
And so I think the difference is minimal right there and therefore you can make decent use of ALL stats on guardian, granted condition damage is somewhat lacking… But if you’re counting 5 stats out of 7 it’s already in celestial favor, so…

I will take your word for that. I don’t like Celestial enough to even compare it to my current gear. I have two specialized ascended back pieces. A zerker for PvE and clerics for WvW. As for never being able to kill anyone? Ask anyone on BG, JQ or SoR if NOC can kill anyone. I didn’t say our whole Guild Runs it, but the better part of our Guardians do.

Besides, If I recall, the Old Healway builds were all about Clerics and they were one of the best roaming builds the guardians had. Sometimes in WvW its not about straight damage, but about outlasting the other guy.

Edit: You ask for a discussion on the gear. It has been discussed many times. There are several people who still bring it up, but the majority of the guardian community agrees a full set is not worth it. However, as in everything with guild wars. Play as you want.

The staff is a WvW weapon. And it will remain such unless there are huge changes. Four of the five skills work well in WvW.

1. Great for tagging in a zerg, and spreading the love
2. Kinda meh
3. Great of stacking swiftness before the zerg starts to move out. We replaced the Static Field blast with these, so that they might actually be used when needed instead of for stacking swiftness.
4. Great for stacking might before we hit the other zerg.
5. Throw it down and watch the people who forgot to use stability fall on there kitten.

There are only a couple of places I will use a staff in PvE. TA is one for the plants, and CoE for smashing those little bomb golems, if there are others I can’t think of them atm. Nothing makes me more sad then watching a PuG guard using a staff full time to spam 1 on a PvE boss. The damage will always be terrible, regardless of Armor set Other then that I stick with my sword/focus and greatsword in pve

Evalia.7103:

Talyn.3295:

In high Level fractals your gonna to take alot of damage regardless if you let something hit you. The best way to clear high level fractals is to not get hit or to negate the damage you would be taking by other means.

Celestial gear isn’t going to help there. For me Its always been zerker, the faster it dies the less chance it has to hit me. I don’t even like running Celestial in WvW, I would run my Soldiers or Clerics there, not the celestial.

negating damage by toughness and healing power? Just a safety net after your back, so you will not actually get 1-shotted by something(most annoying thing, and also happens quite often, especially with guardian base-lacking health pool). Granted, you can block that, but better safe than sorry.
Here’s an example: fire elemental fractal fight. Tell me how you’re going to burst it down with zerkers and you don’t need the heals at all.
As for WvW, soldiers and clerics… hmm.
Clerics(p/t/HP)[ are more of a supporty orientied gear type, nothing’s wrong with that. And Soldier’s(P/t/v) the same, except you’re getting vitality instead of healing power… you’d probably want to mix them to achieve a good mix inbetween burst survivability and damage-over-time survivability.
But you’re not going to do any damage right there. Having a lot of power and 4% critical is pretty sad, in my opinion. If you have this much power you should definitely trade some of it for precision and critical damage to achieve a superior damage output to pure power… And that’s it. Give me some toughness, some vitality with healing power too please, and don’t forget some Power balanced out by precision and critical damage.
That’s downright celestial gear here.
Of course, it would be a different story if you’d build around a gear with healing power, vitality and toughness, with no Power considered at all. But that’s 100% support, very boring, unable to damage anything and being simply a supporting hunk of meat doesn’t seem appealing to me, precisely because you’re basically an incredibly cool banner that can’t do anything by itself.
It would be a different story if you’d build around power, precision and critical damage too, but you’d just get downright oneshotted by anyone in WvW. Speed Runs are not something I’m considering when I’m talking about WvW.

Its better to be a specialist then a generalist. Soldiers and Clerics, of the two I run clerics more its about team play. There is no place for the lone cowboy approach in Tier 1 if you want to do it right. The team that has the best synergy will always have the advantage.

Edit: After thinking about it, the only piece of gear I would get with these stats is my back piece, only then because an ascended back item tends to be a little bit more of a kitten to get then others to get.

Wondered how long it would be before anet decided that we had to much boon duration with the 2-2-2. Been running with this since the change to travlers.

In high Level fractals your gonna to take alot of damage regardless if you let something hit you. The best way to clear high level fractals is to not get hit or to negate the damage you would be taking by other means.

Celestial gear isn’t going to help there. For me Its always been zerker, the faster it dies the less chance it has to hit me. I don’t even like running Celestial in WvW, I would run my Soldiers or Clerics there, not the celestial.

Travlane.5948:

FallinDevast.5364:

Just let condition damage and healing be able to crit also and benefit from precision and maybe +crit damage too. The reason behind is crit damage, although becomes strong when paired with a fair amount of power and precision, is too reliant on these two stats while condition damage and healing are pretty much standalone stats. Instead of nerfing zerker gear, my suggestion will balance things out and elevate other gear stats into the current zerker tier.

funny how they didnt say nerf….but we all know its a nerf. says alot about player mentality on anet.

if crit dmg needs a nerf. why? where is it OP?

if u need to nerf it…

who will it affect the most/hardest? (thief obv)
and will you make reparations for the nerf like putting thief in mid HP pool or w.e. needs to be done?

guardians get perma vigor but thieves get cut and cant. heavy armor should NOT have vigor at all. period. if thieves dont have protection/aegis/high tough/high hp/high armor/invulnerabilty/stability/blocks wowthe list goes on….then heavies Should NOT have vigor and long swiftness. period. long swiftness and vigor should be only for mediums and under. warrior/guard should never have any ONE skill that gives more than 5s of swiftness. yyyyyyyyyup. its fair.

Don’t to throwing insults at the guardian just because Zerker gear is getting nerfed. A heavy armored class with almost no ranged options (scepter doesn’t cut it) no soft crowd control, and Almost no access to swiftness unless we want to run retreat after the staff got changed (its only really good for zerg play as for as SoS)

What is wrong with guardians having the ability to get vigor and dodge? Do we get boarder line over powered stealth for WvV roaming? Do we get the damage output or access to resetting a fight when we want. Last time I checked a thief could out run us easy, or wear us down with their extremely fast “Initiative” regen. Oh and you get access to poisons and for a while had the full on overpowerd Poison share build. QQ me a river when you have played a class. Trust me I might main a guardian, but I have all 8 at 80 and the grass isn’t always greener cause we get Heavy armor, vigor and Aegis. Learn your classes bro

fellyn.5083:

Talyn.3295:

fellyn.5083:

Robert.4197:

fellyn.5083:

Robert.4197:

Fenrir.3609:

Zevilo.9304:

Its good that they’ll nerf zerker.

Why exactly?

Because it divides the community. I run PVT guardian and ran HOW P1, ended up with all zerkers. At the end boss, everyone kept going down and 1 guy died next to an NPC, when I went to rez him, I ended up rezzing the NPC instead. This guy calls me out on it and I apologize. Then he proceeds to say that the reason we are having trouble is because I can’t do enough damage and that the NPC probably does more damage then I do. Well, the other party members didn’t like that comment and actually decided to kick him. We got another party member and finished the dungeon.

I decide to do SE path 1 and everyone decides to stack in the corner for the 3 golems, everyone goes down in a matter of a few seconds. I could tell they were zerkers. After 3 tries we finally got it. After finishing that path, went on to p3. Well, group decided to run past all the mobs right before the first boss and all the enemies got aggroed, followed and wiped everyone out 2 times. After everyone was already downed the 3rd time within a matter of seconds, I just decided to call it quits today. Next time I’m in a dungeon, I’m almost thinking about posting “No Zerkers” I mean maybe I can’t kill enemies as fast as the other people but if people are going down after 1 or 2 hits, how much faster can it be to have to start over and over and over again because the whole party wipes?

So what you’re really saying is you were grouped with bad players. Berserker gear had nothing to do with what you’re talking about.

Zerker gear had everything to do with it. I guarantee if everyone in the group had better defensive armor, they would have survived the first group of enemies. How hard is it to understand that zerker leaves no room for error and makes you die faster? I will admit if you can see, dodge, reflect, block every single attack, that’s great and if you luck out and get a good PUG, zerker probably is the way to go. The problem is too many people think they can run zerker and don’t really understand how to play and die all the time and blame everyone else for their mistake. Why is zerker a problem? It’s been said many times, it creates “elitism”.

Bad players can wear any gear.

Elitism will not go away, there will just be another type of gear. As for HOTW Run I see it this way. PVT isn’t my gear choice for PvE at all. It is selfish and brings nothing to the group. If a guardian isn’t going to run Zerker, should be Clerics at least. HOTW is one of my favorite dungeons, I run it at least once a day, and I do it as a Zerker guardian. Your group had issues, I won’t say its you. That is why they failed not because they were wearing zerker gear.

But at the end of the day this is what we have to look at. PVT/Cleric/whatever needs zerkers, zerkers don’t need them. There is part of the community that cries out and wants to see zerker stats nerfed. Be-careful what you wish for. Its been stated and re-stated that bosses are punching bags with loads of hit points and a few one shot attacks. If we nerf/remove zerker builds from the game what will happen. All runs will take longer, we run the same dungeons for coins and loot. When you find yourself doing hotw and it takes an hour to run one path because you can’t kill the mobs fast enough you will be wanting some dps in your party again. How long can you expect players to grind the same stuff when it takes that long? At least now I don’t mind it cause its done rather quickly. If Anet does nerf zerker gear, I think that might be the time for me to part ways.

The solution isn’t to nerf what works, its to fix what is broken. Control and Support need a buff, we have been saying this for a while now. Given the history of how Anet fixes things it won’t happen, they will just nerf the dps and bam, that will be it.

I think you quoted the wrong person.

Sorry, i was trying to get both your post in with his, I don’t know why it only quoted yours.

Blade.3456:

Talyn.3295:

Blade.3456:

“Deploy Kites!”

I will give you a balloon.

This is a balloon free zone, Sir.

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You were saying?

Robert.4197:

fellyn.5083:

Robert.4197:

Fenrir.3609:

Zevilo.9304:

Its good that they’ll nerf zerker.

Why exactly?

Because it divides the community. I run PVT guardian and ran HOW P1, ended up with all zerkers. At the end boss, everyone kept going down and 1 guy died next to an NPC, when I went to rez him, I ended up rezzing the NPC instead. This guy calls me out on it and I apologize. Then he proceeds to say that the reason we are having trouble is because I can’t do enough damage and that the NPC probably does more damage then I do. Well, the other party members didn’t like that comment and actually decided to kick him. We got another party member and finished the dungeon.

I decide to do SE path 1 and everyone decides to stack in the corner for the 3 golems, everyone goes down in a matter of a few seconds. I could tell they were zerkers. After 3 tries we finally got it. After finishing that path, went on to p3. Well, group decided to run past all the mobs right before the first boss and all the enemies got aggroed, followed and wiped everyone out 2 times. After everyone was already downed the 3rd time within a matter of seconds, I just decided to call it quits today. Next time I’m in a dungeon, I’m almost thinking about posting “No Zerkers” I mean maybe I can’t kill enemies as fast as the other people but if people are going down after 1 or 2 hits, how much faster can it be to have to start over and over and over again because the whole party wipes?

So what you’re really saying is you were grouped with bad players. Berserker gear had nothing to do with what you’re talking about.

Zerker gear had everything to do with it. I guarantee if everyone in the group had better defensive armor, they would have survived the first group of enemies. How hard is it to understand that zerker leaves no room for error and makes you die faster? I will admit if you can see, dodge, reflect, block every single attack, that’s great and if you luck out and get a good PUG, zerker probably is the way to go. The problem is too many people think they can run zerker and don’t really understand how to play and die all the time and blame everyone else for their mistake. Why is zerker a problem? It’s been said many times, it creates “elitism”.

Elitism will not go away, there will just be another type of gear. As for HOTW Run I see it this way. PVT isn’t my gear choice for PvE at all. It is selfish and brings nothing to the group. If a guardian isn’t going to run Zerker, should be Clerics at least. HOTW is one of my favorite dungeons, I run it at least once a day, and I do it as a Zerker guardian. Your group had issues, I won’t say its you. That is why they failed not because they were wearing zerker gear.

But at the end of the day this is what we have to look at. PVT/Cleric/whatever needs zerkers, zerkers don’t need them. There is part of the community that cries out and wants to see zerker stats nerfed. Be-careful what you wish for. Its been stated and re-stated that bosses are punching bags with loads of hit points and a few one shot attacks. If we nerf/remove zerker builds from the game what will happen. All runs will take longer, we run the same dungeons for coins and loot. When you find yourself doing hotw and it takes an hour to run one path because you can’t kill the mobs fast enough you will be wanting some dps in your party again. How long can you expect players to grind the same stuff when it takes that long? At least now I don’t mind it cause its done rather quickly. If Anet does nerf zerker gear, I think that might be the time for me to part ways.

The solution isn’t to nerf what works, its to fix what is broken. Control and Support need a buff, we have been saying this for a while now. Given the history of how Anet fixes things it won’t happen, they will just nerf the dps and bam, that will be it.

I don’t foresee Anet changing how we acquire Laurels. However I would offer some advice if your wanting to gear that many toons. I have 10 80s myself and have had no problems getting them outfitted with ascended trinkets.

1. Only Amulets are exclusive to the Laurel Vendor, for 30 unless you use wvw Tokens which will reduce this to 20. Since this was implemented its how I always purchase mine.

2. Rings can be gotten from Fractals of the Mist. With the new update this is faster then then doing the daily to earn laurels as we can get more then one pristine starting even at low levels. So if my guild is not in wvw we do two are three runs a day.

3. Accessories are obtained with Guild Commendations and gold. Even though we spend a good portion of our time in WvW my guild finds one night a week to knock out all the missions to earn us commendations for gear or what not.

Its not a perfect system by far, but its what we have to work with now.

Ahh, I didn’t get a chance to play in the beta, I started during the three day headstart in Aug. I always wondered about that guy. Shame I didn’t get a chance to fight him. Any chance you might add him back anet?

I want to thank those who we fought against. If there hadn’t been anyone on the field it would have been a very boring season.

Got to love map chat, I wasn’t even paying attention

When we have both the daily Aquatic slayer and Maguuman Killer I always like to head down to Spiral Waypoint in Caledon Forest. Every time I do, I can’t help but wonder at this big old crab. It would make for neat boss event, or something. I don’t even know if this one is still alive looks kinda dead to me.

Blade.3456:

“Deploy Kites!”

I will give you a balloon.

Lost my +5 inherent when I upgraded.

Thanks for the Fun tonight.

Caliburn.1845:

If JQ/SoR could transfer enough players to Mag/SoS to make BG take second or even third in week six, it would be the most spectacular logistical and strategic feat ever seen in GW2.

That sounds alot like match manipulation to me.

Not really opposed to the changes, as many of these have been discussed this is just more a summery. however I still don’t like relying on a RNG to get a soft cc. A chill or cripple needs to be added to the weapon like almost everyone else as access to on at least one weapon. We have hard cc, but soft is just as if not more important due to the limited duration on hard cc

Kelnis.1829:

JonPeters.5630:

The change to sword damage from 5% to 10%. I’ve seen a lot of talk that maybe it is not really needed. The fact was this was a lackluster trait and this is a lackluster change to it. I would love to do the right thing here and have a change that MH sword wants rather than just 5% more damage.

Thoughts?

Jon

There are several possible variations that would be both considerable and welcome…

1) 5% Sword damage, Swords have a 33% chance to apply Torment on crit, 0.5s ICD. Conceivably, this would give us a tool that punishes movement away from us. It would vary in potency depending on Guardian build. I have several concerns with this idea:
a) It wouldn’t be enough to truly give Guardians a way to push a condition build.
b) It does not fit the theme of a Guardian as what I perceive that ANet perceives us as.
c) It would likely not be punishing enough to dissuade anyone from NOT running away. This would be primarily due to the lack of pressure we could apply if we were utilizing it well (high condition damage, sacrificing raw damage throughput.)

2a) 5% Sword damage, critical attacks have a 25% chance of granting 1s of swiftness, 0.5s ICD. This very specifically does not say “swords,” this would include all damage dealt by the guardian. This would supplement any build that was aiming for damage in such a way that if they are able to get on a target, the swiftness should – if used adequately – should help them stay on target. This would help to address our incombat sluggishness, by providing us with a subtle boost without relying on external sources. This would also be more reasonable with just swords being able to provide the swiftness.

2b) 5% sword damage, Sword attacks have a 10% chance of granting 10s of swiftness, 30s ICD. This is a less interesting option that has a much less drastic change on our balance as a class. With excessive boon duration (something you likely won’t see on a build focused on damage), you could see close to 66% uptime of swiftness from just this, but you’d probably see closer to 10-12 seconds on average. This provide us a moderate boost during our initial burst, but would not address our “field mobility.”

I am trying to stay within the constraints of the question, so hopefully you guys come up with something interesting. Also, Jon, still wanna know about Shattered Aegis!

Note to most other posters: please stay on topic, many of you are responding with general complaints/suggestions, but the question he most recently asked is very specific. Compare it to effects like Zealous Blade and brain storm from there.

Why do people keep suggesting random number generators for CC. I hate that idea. I mean if we look at it across the board sure there are some jobs that have bleed with crits etc like the warriors have. But many of the weapons of the other classes have built in crowd control on the skill, it isn’t something they have to trait for or pray that the RNG gives it at the right time.

Thanks for responding Jon.

I think alot of the guardians here are happy that we are getting a look at for some of the problems that plaque us. I think the change to sword would be better if we got a reduction in the skill recharge rather rather then a just another 5%

Yet we have other weapons in the same boat. Scepter Is kinda lack luster. Maybe having scepter 2 add a little soft/hard cc would be nice.

Shield 4 could stand to place a offense condition on foes as it places protection on allies. Weakness would be nice, a blind, possible a chill. I would also be nice if it blocked rather then just popped but I woudln’t even mind that so much if we got something added to make it more worthwhile in some instances.

I don’t see Warriors as a demi-gods in any way shape or form. Nor do I think that the Current guardian is weak. This doesn’t need to turn into another Guardian vs Warrior thread. Lord knows we have enough of those already. All I was doing with my earlier post was pointing out a few things that had been mentioned previously.

We are supposed to be a more defensive class. However we do have a higher dps potential then the warriors do. I have seen the proof of this, and even replicated it. The issue with it however is how zarking much we have to give up to get there. I only really do the DPS builds for pve, they work well. However I don’t feel that they are exactly optimal for wvw. I don’t want the Guardian to become another over powered noob class like the current warrior is.

What I want is for anet to rethink what they are doing. We don’t need more damage. What we need is for some of our useless skills to be fixed and our traits to get another look, some merged and some new ones added.

The truth of the matter. We are balanced. But the Rest of the game is out of balance. The current warriors and condition meta. I was in WvW tonight on my necro tabbing through the enemy zerg when I came across a Guardian at about half health, so I popped my signet and let him have it followed by epidemic to spread the love. Before I had even gotten epidemic off the poor fellow was already downed. I won’t say it was my conditions that did it. But knowing his low health pool and how much condition damage I had at the time I know it played a roll.

I thought about it guys. I think we might be wrong on a few things.

First from a balance stand point what sense would it make for a heavy armored like us to
1. have a lot of hp
2. Great/Good damage
3. Decent passive regeneration
4. Excellent CC both hard and soft
5. Good passive movement speed with access to reliable swiftness.
6. A nice selection of skills

Now wouldn’t that be over powered?…. What’s that? the Warrior already has all that?

Well frell me dead…

If we are supposed to Teleport to a foe and stay there, then our Teleports need to provide a condition to keep the foes there. Perhaps a chill or a cripple? I would hate to see us lose the blinds thought as this are extremely useful for a zerker guardian in PvE. But with the retaliation nerf, there is nothing to keep a foe from just out running us and shooting us down with range spikes.

Peregrine Falcon.5496:

The biggest problem that I see with the Guardian, and with these changes, in PvE is that it doesn’t seem like they have a defined role. And yes, I do believe that it’s possible to have a defined roll without having the ‘Holy Trinity.’

The biggest problem that I see with them in WvW is that the changes to Shattered Aegis and Symbol of Swiftness aren’t buffs to the Guardian class, they’re buffs to the Zerg. It seems like you definitely want to give the Zerg reason to desire Guardians. I believe that a better idea would be to provide motivation for players to want to play Guardians in WvW. Buffing the Zerg isn’t going to accomplish that. Buffing the Guardian however, just might.

Tanky and supportive guardians are in a strong position in many gametypes.
While Guardians do well in both roles in all forms of PvE, they can’t do much of either of these things in WvW. I see two reasons for this.

Everything is IMHO, of course. And I apologize if my post ‘sounded’ in any way sarcastic or insulting. That isn’t my intention. I’m not angry or ranting. I’m simply trying to calmly state my point.

There is more then enough reasons for a Zerg to want to have Guardians. Well at least any zerg that is more then a mindless group of people wandering the map with no idea what is going on or where they are going except they are following that little blue tag.

Most groups in wvw already want guardians. My guild pretty much protects our boarderlands during the sea hours of our map, both with havoc and zerg play. The leader likes to get at least one guardian per group to provide buffs and soak damage from the opposing zergs. Anything that makes guardians stronger in WvW would be great. I don’t see the current changes helping out all that much with the problems we face there however.

I will wait until more information comes out. But right now all that seems to have happened is that my pve build got a buff and my wvw build didn’t. The Guardian is already a core part of WvW. It just needs to be stronger in certain things, and I think we would all be happy with it.

JonPeters.5630:

Hello Guardians,

So I wanted to talk about the bigger discussion topics for the Dec changes for you as well.

Shattered Aegis
As soon as I get in on Monday, I’ll post the damage #s on this and the power scaling. I think a meaning ful discussion about this change is going to require that. One danger here is that big WvW zergs using this could be really powerful, but I will say that the numbers are decent.

Supreme Justice and Kindled Zeal
I feel like there is a build here, but TBH I haven’t gotten it to work in our internal testing yet. This is as good a place as any to talk about stat conversion traits.

Currently they do not convert 100% of a stat because certain stat bonuses such as those from signets do not get converted. For that reason we are being conservative but normalizing all of our conversions to the follow #s for now.
Minor: 5%,7%, and 10% respectively for adept, master and grandmaster.
Major: 7%,10%, and 13% respectively for adept, master, and grandmaster.

I’m not sure this will be enough, but I do not want these traits to be overpowered as I feel they are fairly passive. That being said, I think they are good simple traits and with 12 traits per line it is absolutely fine to have some passive simple to understand traits.

Another thing about this build is that you do not have all of the information you need about this power guardian right now, but I can’t reveal more without spoilers. /tease

Symbol of Swiftness
To clarify the new Symbol of Swiftness will give you 4 seconds of Swiftness every single pulse regardless of if you have swiftness or not. This is a improvement in many situations and a slight loss in the situation where you were using the Symbol as just a one time buff. I think this makes it feel more like a Symbol, which is good. We are still discussing the idea of it being 5 seconds, but there is some danger of that going pretty high with boon duration.

Power guardian vs Condition guardian
I think Dec 10th will see the emergence of the power guardian, but I think that the condition based guardian still has a ways to go. Ultimately this is because it is hard to cover the burning and frankly you need a good reliable second or even third condition that guardians simply do not have right now. I think for those professions lacking that 3rd damage condition we are looking at supplementing them via runes and sigils rather than skills/traits right now but that won’t be something we attempt until the build that follows the Dec 10th build.

I think that is everything for guardian and hopefully you enjoyed a few half spoiler/half teases.

Thanks,

Jon

Thanks for taking the the time to reply and answer some of our questions. I love the guardian class and what it stands for. And while I do like the idea of a more offensive guardian style of play I only really see that being useful some of the time. Our very low hp base and lack of significant ranged options doesn’t allow for much survival in some instances.

I think that if you were to consider some trait options which allowed us to get some more HP we might be more inclined to try this style of play more.

In my opinion the thing most guardians are looking for right now is some kind of soft crowd control, mainly either a chill or a cripple that isn’t part of a RNG. Also spirit weapons are weak in most instances in the game. I myself would be very happy to see some work put into them to make them usable again. Even if this would require a split between sPvP versions and the rest of the game.

I do look forwards to seeing the information on the power guardian.

Thanks again for replying

Like I said, a small percentage of players who are always here complaining rather then actually playing the game. And sure say I am in the top 5% it doesn’t bother me. The long and short of it is, that Anet already stated they won’t be changing this, so the point is moot. I won’t be coming back here. Even for the laughs.

Talyn.3295:

With the exception of a small percentage of people who come here to complain about ascended weapons most of the population is over whatever issue they had with them. We do not need crazy pointless changes to the system yet again. And I will say it anyway because the point stands. If you do not want to work for the stat bonus that is fine, don’t. But many of us have made our gear and we like it. We do not need this change you suggest and we don’t want it. If you want to swap stats get a legendary like the rest of us. But I already know what the response to that will be.

With the exception of a small percentage of people who come here to complain about ascended weapons most of the population is over whatever issue they had with them. We do not need crazy pointless changes to tje system yet again. If you do not want to work for the stat bonus that is fine. But we do not need this change. If you want to swap stats get a legendary like the rest of us. But I already jnow what the response to that will be.

This Trait is next to useless. I will never use when there are better options for almost any build. Until the developers actually get serious about guardians and look over some of our more useless traits, this one and yes I am looking at you again Zeal Line. Then there are only so many ways we can customize.

I am not a fan of relying on the RNG for anything important and CC is important. I would rather just put a sigil on my weapon and hope it fires off with crits at leas then I don’t have to wait on that crazy cool down. Cause odds are it will fire off when you don’t want or need it too and when you do its on cool down again.

They don’t need to be indestructible. They were at one point and that was way to over powered for sPvP. They just need to be useful, which in the current state of the game only the shield is, and then only in very rare instances. Its whatever though, I have no idea how to actually change it, although there are enough ideas being thrown about on the forums.

Sadly I don’t ever want to see armor be able to transmute to other weight classes. When I am in WvW and I see someone in Light/medium/heavy armor I want to be able to get an idea of what they are. I don’t need a thief poping out and sticking me in the back because I thought it was a Elementalist at first.

sminkiottone.6972:

zen.6091:

Talyn.3295:

It dosen’t matter how much you QQ over the fact Ascended gear is in the game. Its here to stay and alot of us like it and use it. Just because you refuse to do the work to get it doesn’t mean those who do shouldn’t be able to use it. You have no one to blame for yourself, and before you throw that out again, I dont’ champ farm. I play the game.

This is a perfect example of the attitude about ascended gear that I’ll never quite understand.

What exactly do you mean by “do the work”. Is this a game, or a job? Why should I have to spend one second of my time doing things I don’t enjoy doing so I can be at the same gear level as those who “do the work”. I want to launch the game, load into WvW, and start playing. That’s it, that’s all I want to do.

There was a great post on Reddit the other day that does perhaps provide a little insight. The tl;dr version is there are a lot of people playing MMOs that don’t play to have fun; they are addicts who just need achievable goals put in front of them. Maybe like, oh, dailies, monthlies, achievement points, increasingly grindy gear acquisition…

Well anyway, not trying to pick on on you, but the people who do like ascended equipment have to try to understand why many of us don’t like it, and it’s not because we are lazy / stupid / etc.

You are right in all fronts,

some people have problems in theyr life ( depression / illness / social disorders / work problems / money problems / family problems / ecc. ecc. ) and WoW style MMo’s give a false sense of accomplishment/happiness, many studies shows it.

It’s a serious problem imo, but it can be treated

I’m not saying that it’s the only case, but look at this :

https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/wuv/wuv/Thank-you-for-destroying-WvW-achievements/first#post3080141

It clearly shows that there is a problem.

Sure, being an active member of the United States Military currently stationed in Korea I have a bit of time on my hands. But my life isn’t lacking and I don’t need any video game to get a sense of achievement in my life.

Video games are a hobby. And in any hobby your gonna need to put some effort into it. When I learned to play the guitar i didn’t do it over night, I had to practice and stick with it. Anyone who has put together a model car will tell you that its not as easy as it looks the first time you do it.

The point is that any hobby is going to require a little investment. And for the OP to fly off and demand things that effect the time I spent on this game irritates me. I am not the one standing around telling him that he or she needs to play a certain way and only that way. He can do as he pleases, and so will I.

Dark Catalyst.1028:

Talyn.3295:

It dosen’t matter how much you QQ over the fact Ascended gear is in the game. Its here to stay and alot of us like it and use it. Just because you refuse to do the work to get it doesn’t mean those who do shouldn’t be able to use it. You have no one to blame for yourself, and before you throw that out again, I dont’ champ farm. I play the game.

I play the game and have piles of bloodstone dust, 15 dark matter, and 30 of everything else. What magical activities are you doing to get all of the mats?

You like it huh? Of course you do, because it gives you a statistical advantage over other players. But wait, most of its ardent defenders claim it “doesn’t make a difference” in WvW and the stat gains are trivial. So which is it?

As for this one, I laughed pertty hard. Your talking to a guy who has been known to Roam in WvW wearing only greens or golds to see how well he stacks up against people. If my connection was better I would even upload some clips on youtube. but I don’t think you would even understand the point of it, because it seems that deep down you want the stats and that is it. I think if you had the stats right now you would be defending and not attacking on Ascended Weapons in wvw.

By the way they are not that hard to get. Plenty of guides out there. I have more then enough to make at least five more setting in my vault from doing just wvw and a few Temples in Orr.

But I am done with this thread.

I won’t be making any other post here since Anet already said they had no plans of removing them before. So unless something changes on that end this is a rather pointless discussion.

Cheers.