He also mentions in the interview that he has no idea what the team responsible for fixing broken/under used utilities/skills/traits is doing, so I wouldn’t read too much into the statement above.
It just means the regen boon lasts 30% longer – so how many extra ticks can complete within the additional time.
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Personally I’d like to see this as a bodyguard skill. We can lose the heal altogether.
Targetted teleport to ally across any elevation and apply protection and pop a shield of absorption for a few seconds on the other end – so you can save a team-mate in trouble.
The other option is to allow you to teleport a party member (note: not ally – to prevent trolling) to your location. ( even when downed? ).
That would be powerful enough to warrant the high cooldown.
Those would seem sufficiently guardiany without violating Anet’s no-targetted heal policy.
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I use it to teleport onto allies on platforms above me in jumping puzzles. That’s about it.
I’ve never even managed to get it to do that – doesn’t there need to be a path to the friendly anyway (ie. without jumping)?
I find Shelter indispensable with an AH build where, lets face it you have plenty of ways to keep your HP topped up anyway, and the biggest danger to you is avoiding big damage spikes.
Best thing about the signet is you can trait it for 2xpassive condition removals every 10 seconds which is a nice set-and-forget utility. If you don’t run with AH I think it’s definitely worth slotting ( although it won’t help you to survive teleport into the middle of a zerg )
A meditation build can definitely be effective.
The biggest downside is of course that you are required to slot meditations for it to be viable. It can be a bit of a an issue if you like switching utilities around to fit whatever situation you are facing.
Please consider first when calling to either “nerf guardians” or “buff all other classes” for support roles, that the issue here is really down to the mechanics of FOTM more than anything else.
Prior to fractals I would see a huge variety of class compositions in dungeons, and rarely any call for specific classes only (except for speed-farming). I rarely saw Shield of the Avenger in play, and WoR was largely a WvW skill, or only switched in on certain boss encounters.
Fractals on the other-hand seems to take every opportunity to hurl reflectable or blockable projectiles at you, so it’s no wonder that groups are crying out for guards at higher levels.
Ideally Anet should rework several zones which play to the strengths of other classes. ( And disable consumable items? )
Yup the smite-as-a-symbol seems to be a very popular suggestion, if only because currently the projectiles do not pass through enemies so the effect gets weaker the more people that stand (like lemons) in the circle.
For Shield of Wrath, are you suggesting to remove the wrath part ( ie the massive damage it does ) and replace with daze? Because I think I’d rather keep the former, and adding daze on top would be OP.
As you have 20 in Virtues, you could try Absolute Resolution, which will remove 3 conditions from you and all of your nearby allies when you activate Virtue of Resolve. A wonderful get-out-of-jail-free card.
Judges Intervention and Flashing Blade can teleport you out of snares and knockdown, and give you a couple of seconds breathing room when you are immobilized ( If you are out of condition removals ).
yeah, don’t change shield of wrath, it’s pretty much perfect as it is ( and it’s our highest damage skill ).
I kept track of the skills I used on the last 2 instances I ran:
TA:
- Stand Your Ground ( group stability – shout )
- Hallowed Ground ( group stability – shout )
- Hold the line ( group protection/regen )
- Judges Intervention ( stun break, teleport )
- Wall of Reflection
- Save Yourselves ( group condition purge, stun break )
- I switched my elite utility for Tomb of Wrath for the end boss
- I switched traits twice.
- I switched my offhand weapon a couple of times.
- + copious spamming of Virtues
Fractals ( Underwater, Dredge, Uncategorized, Jade ):
- Stand your ground
- Judges Intervention
- Wall of Reflection
- Purging Flames ( group condition removal, fire field )
- Shield of the Avenger ( Harpies, Old Tom, Raving Asura )
- Sanctuary ( Harpies )
- Hammer of Wisdom ( underwater )
- Sword of Justice ( underwater )
- Switched 2 hand weapons 3 times, single hand twice and offhand 3 times
- Switched traits 4 times
- + copious spamming of Virtues
I didn’t count the actual physic number of swaps I did, but pretty much between every “out of combat” period between encounters.
If I ran with the same weapons and skills all of the time, I think I’d die of boredom eventually and I’d be doing my group a great disservice.
Also in a PUG you need to be aware of what your party members are using, otherwise you’re just wasting cooldowns ( for instance you pop your reflect skill inside a mesmer’s feedback ). If there’s another guardian in the group who uses the hammer, I’ll probably switch to the greatsword as my main, and try not to lay down the same effects.
Admittedly, guardian is generally seen as a support class and there’s more pressure to use support skills than for other professions ( you’re more likely to get comments from your team if you’re not using a certain skill at a certain point ).
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They still do work in fractals situationally. The shield lasted well against harpies and old tom, and worked fine against the underwater jelly fish, but you can forget about sending them against any kind of melee or aoe mobs.
I had this from when they were still relatively cheap to make ( unfortunately this is no longer the case ), and upgrading them to ascended costs practically nothing.
Gold is only “cheap” for folks that can play enough to collect it, so go for whichever version will require less farm time for you.
Also be sure it’s what you’re looking for – it’s good if you are striving for a balanced build.
quite often they are slow to turn when performing their stream attack, so you can dodge through them and stand behind them. ( depends on the mobs though )
If you don’t like conditions then you can do a lot worse than traiting Purity ( 10 points into valor ).
Basically this gives you 2x passive condition removals every 10 seconds.
Also, many people seem to use Runes of the Soldier combined with shouts as an active condition removal ( I’ve not run with it personally, so I can’t comment on it’s effectiveness, but it does seem popular ).
It’s probably better than slotting something like Smite Condition or Contemplation of Purty, since you’re not sacrificing utility for condition removal.
Pure of Voice is very bugged.
Judges Intervention works nicely, and you can get an extra stun break from Virtue of Courage if you trait deep into virtues (Shielded Mind – not worth the points though imho), or remove condition from Virtue of Resolve with Absolute Resolution
From a group support build perspective, switching to Save Yourselves to suck all the fear onto yourself and the clense with Virtue of Resolve or Contemplation of Purity ( works a treat against Jormag for instance )
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I remembered this old post from Eveningstar that explains it very well, just incase Brutaly’s usual thorough explanations aren’t enough .
( especially since there seems to be half a dozen posts all essentially talking about the same thing at the moment )
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As Bash points out this is about the optimal distribution of stats rather than just an argument about health pool size.
Low HP means you’ve invested heavily into healing power and toughness or crit/crit damage.
IMHO Anet have done a pretty good job at balancing the relative pool size in relation to healing, armour or damage output ( although I definitely wouldn’t say no to a higher base line ).
- You can invest in healing power and toughness support heavy stats and throws out some big heals and soak up alot of melee damage, and keep agro in pve. Your effective healing against direct damage is high.
- You can have a large HP pool to help mitigate conditions and bursts and couple with some nice DPS. Your effective healing for direct damage is low, but you have a larger buffer against indirect damage.
- You can sacrifice HP for damage, and keep your healing trickling in by critting like an SOB. Your effective healing is low for both direct and indirect damage, but you have high HP recovery without much overheal wastage.
- You can mix a little of all of the above for a balanced build
Really it just comes down to how you should best invest your points to maximise your weapons, utilities and traits and compliment your playing style.
Anyone who argues vehemently that one is better than the other is missing the point
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Since you can shoot through your own wall…
You would fire your scepter ball, it would go through yours, bounce off his, go back through yours, and hit you in the face.
Not sure this is the case, as the reflect basically changes ownership of the projectile ( which is why mesmer clones become your allies if they bounce off WoR )
Definitely worth a test though.
the devs need to hurry up and grind their test guardians above level 40.
I highly recommend you experiment with all the utilities you have available to get a feel for what they do and how they perform.
You should really think about switching them around to best suit the situation AND take best advantage of your traits.
Some utilities are useful most of the time, and most utilities are useful some of the time – so you’ve just got to experience them a bit to learn when to use what.
I will say that there are a few that are just too bugged currently to be useful – like merciful intervention and most of the spirit weapons ( unless you are levelling )
I like to have a little in both lines ( Radiance and Virtues )
Aside from the usual 30 in Valor, I’ve kept 10 points in Virtues, and I find myself very frequently hotswitching the trait between Master of Consecrations and Unscathed Contender ( and before the patch, increased weapon duration ) depending on the situations.
I only run 20 in honor, so I also have 10 in Radiance, hotswitching between Signet Mastery and Blind Exposure ( I mostly run with Shelter these days though, so tend to stick with Blind ).
I like to have access to as many useful traits as possible, even if that means losing some effectiveness in any one configuration.
“Feel my wrath”
“Feel my wrath”
“Feel my wrath”
“Feel my wrath”
“Feel my wrath”
“Feel my wrath”
;-)
I agree though – it would benefit the whole team if they had a queue to when boons like stability was available to them.
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As far as I have seen so far ( which isn’t much because I only used to use them underwater ) , there is something off with their scaling. So they’re actually really powerful while you are levelling and practically useless at endgame.
Well hammer has a very reliable blast finisher.
If you have a mesmer or two in your group then you can keep chaos armor up ALOT.
Going back to the GS, Whirling Wrath in a fire field gives you a nice dps boost ( we can use purging flames and hallowed ground to do this ourselves ).
Asura’s get a nice cultural poison bolt combo with that WW too when coupled with a Radiation field generator.
Also, if all of my condition removal skills are on CD, then I’ll lay down Symbol of Wrath and do a whirl finisher inside it to clense a pesky condition ( luckily the GS has 2x whirls ).
People often overlook Wall of Reflection’s light field which is extremely powerful at clearing conditions if you drop it infront of your ranged allies.
You don’t really need to be tanky to support.
Basically I keep 3 sets in my inventory to switch around depending on the dungeon.
The knights/zerker mix that some folks have listed here is a very powerful combination of dps and tankiness, and i’d recommend it to anyone running PVE – but there are plenty of other viable options too.
But most of the time I’ll run full zerker armour with a mix of accessories. I have pretty low armour and HP, but thanks to healing on crit traits, and a large supply damage mitigation and stun breaks can stay in the face of the enemy most of the time.
Support for the party comes in the supply of a constant stream of protection for melee classes and might, regen, blinds, vulnerability.
Admittedly I only supply a “mediocre” amount of party healing in this build through regen and dodge heals – but every class can pretty much handle their own healing anyway, so it’s not often an issue ( and there are better healer classes than a guardian anyway ).
Utility wise, these I’ll switch between nearly every encounter in a dungeon to best suit the situation ( re-traiting too if it’s beneficial ). That way I can focus on giving the best support either through area denial, stability, reflection, condition removal or shout boons depending on the foe.
You really don’t want to take a guardian on a run which just pops wall of reflection at every encounter and thinks that’s enough.
note: I’m not saying healing spec’d guardians are bad in anyway – they’re great too – I just wanted to highlight it’s not the only way of playing the class to be useful. At the end of the day, it’s how the class is played more than what it’s capable of.
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Yeah I bug reported the spirit weapons on the day of patch release and suggested something similar. It’s nice because it encourages the use of Zeal.
Yeah, 70% is very high for it not to land a crit. I’m still very doubtful that your stats match up to your output. I need an SS or something to go off of because you should be hitting at least 2-3k higher on crits
Not really a question of it not landing a crit, but landing all 7 strikes ( or 14 if you include the projectiles ) as a crit to get your max damage output. Even with a 70% rate, that’s going to be a little rare.
I do agree those numbers seem a little low though – perhaps you were unlucky and kept running into tanky builds
Definitely make sure you have both in your inventory. I switch between them all the time depending on the situation.
Don’t underestimate the focus as a support weapon though:
Ray of judgement both damages/blind AND cures team conditions and pops regen.
Shield of wrath is great for res’ing downed team members AND is one of our hardest hitting single contact skills ( and it’s AoE )
As others have mentioned, shield is great for clearing mobs off yourself and your team, and basically having fun with, and despite what you might think, does absorb projectiles for a reasonable amount of time. ( you can never have too much protection either ).
The main issue being the shield really needs traiting before it’s viable, whereas the focus is useful from the get-go
Well, I suppose 30% of your WW hits won’t crit, so you won’t stack up the same kind of numbers as one good Might Blow proc.
( try testing again with “Save Yourselves!” to get some fury )
Also MB is a blast finisher, so I don’t know if you have some extra might stacked on average.
Also don’t feel compelled to get a full set in any one type of armour .
It’s perfectly valid to mix and match sets to get a good balance of stats – eg Knights, Valkyrie and Berserker or PVT Karma etc. (although it can be expensive if you don’t get the balance right the first time)
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I don’t buy the nerf due to pvp argument… It’s pretty rare to see a spirit weapon build guardian in wvw because you lose too much by investing in their trait line, and i’ve yet to see anyone complain they are OP in pvp…anyway, i’m going offtopic…
…wrt fractals, i’ve not bothered to try them myself, but i’ve see how quick they due to mist npcs and orr trash mobs.
updated original post with a note about ranger pet buff
It’s still useful, it’s just not mindless now… SoA will be more about positioning, and Guardians still have WoR which is still among the best of project reflecting utilities.
If they are useful, it would be in such a slender set of circumstances that using another utility would most likely be more beneficial to everyone.
At first I thought the harpies might be a good candidate still for SoA, but sadly tests show the shield dies before it even gets a chance to proc a bubble. ( admittedly, I haven’t had the asura fractal yet since the patch, so i can’t speak from first-hand knowledge )
Don’t get me wrong, I’m fine running fractals without spirit weapons – I can see that they were OP for those instances – but the proper fix would have been to make fractal skills unblockable, or to make the weapons susceptable to agony, rather than make them useless in every part of the game (otherwise it’s better to just remove them entirely, as they are wasting valuable traits)
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I think this nerf was due to the use of avenger in fotm. It simplified a lot of fractals it seemed to anet. However, tot sure why anet is nerfing things because they are useful for fotm. It’s as if they don’t want us to progress and learn how to make use of our utilities. And GG fighting in water. Not sure how I’ll survive now.
I mentioned a week ago in the dungeon forums that I hoped they don’t nerf SW just because issues with FoTM ( which of course they did ). IMHO they could have just made the shield either not block a bunch of FoTM attacks or make them vulnerable to agony
Great review.
I doubt we’ll see such sweeping changes to a class unfortunately. The best we can hope for are tweaks and fixes.
Adding a new Virtue at this stage is probably way outside of their roadmap, so the best you might hope for is reclassifying AH and MF into a lower tier.
Incidentally I sent a bug report on the spirit weapon issue suggesting exactly what you did: make “Eternal Spirit” grant SW invincibility. I had the feeling that this is perhaps what they intended, but forgot to include the trait change in the patch ( as it might just tempt a handful of people to invest in Zeal ).
In terms of easy-mode fractals, you might just want to make them susceptible to agony…
Anyway, good work!
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Ok this looks like it’s no longer an issue.
Guardian spirit weapons have been all nerfed into the ground on the last patch, and are no longer viable in any scenario, let alone fractals.
Only a guardian has spirit weapons made out of french cheese
Just tested SoA against the Blue Lord NPCs in the mists and sadly it died in literally 2 seconds, only absorbing 1 ranged attack.
Looks like it will only ever be useful in scenarios when you’re just repelling ranged projectiles, with no AoE/condition effects of any kind
I was secretly hoping that at least the dps of the hammer/sword would scale with your stats, but sadly it still doesn’t.
On the bright side, at least I will have an extra utility slot free for FoTM now…
It’s almost like they were intending to change the trait Eternal Spirit to also make the spirits invincible, to encourage people to start using Zeal more, and then forgot to actually update the traits in the patch…
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Can anyone comment on the shield’s surviveability in instances yet?
i am not able to play for a day or two.
While i never had a build based around SW, i did used to switch to them at ranged boss fights or underwater to increase my dps. Now there isn’t any point in that either.
I really don’t get the SW change at all.
I really hope it’s not a response to the complaints some classes have levelled at the shield being “too good” for Fractals… ( really they should just have fixed fractals than try and give SW rubbish survivability )
Also, quite a few other classes have been nerfed heavily…
hmm I guess if spirit weapons can now be bound, interrupted, slowed, knocked back or blinded, it might have big implications of SW builds. If it means they can be destroyed then I really hope they have a LOT of HP
Looks like knockback skills should no longer be dodge-able through … yay!
( if you look through most class notes, you’ll see some kind of reference to the dodge mechanic and knockback )
Warrior
- Reckless Dodge: This trait no longer enables players to break knockback effects.
Elementalist
- Evasive Arcana: This trait no longer enables players to break knockback effects
Necromancer
- Mark of Evasion: This trait no longer enables players to break knockback effects.
Guardian
- Absolute Resolution: This trait now functions with Battle Presence.
- Battle Presence: This trait no longer misses pulses or spams “immune” text.
- Empower: This skill now appropriately applies might for 10 seconds.
- Selfless Daring: This trait no longer enables players to break knockback effects.
- Shield of the Avenger: Fixed the damage displayed in this skill’s Command variant.
- Spirit weapons are now susceptible to attacks.
- Sword of Justice: Fixed the damage displayed the descriptions for this skill and its Command variant.
- Sword Wave: This skill is now able to strike gadgets that are low to the ground.
- Zealot’s Flame: Added burning information to this skill’s description.
Mostly good, although I hope they haven’t made spirits really squishy
Update: I take it back, the spirit weapon nerf is huge – hammer/sword get destroyed by simple white mobs after a few hits apparently. ( not tested it yet myself )
Update2: Just added to patch notes:
Ranger
- Spirit health increased by 25%.
which kind of adds insult to injury – although I’m happy rangers have had their pets buffed
Discuss…
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For Dungeons and Fractals, I get downed a lot more than I’d like. Perhaps its because I’m not used to it as much as open world and not as experienced as I should be, or maybe I just am not as skilled as others, or it could be the weapons I use (I main a GS mostly), maybe its the berserker gear.
Are you using the OP life steal on crit food? If not, it works wonders with a glassy berserker build. I run most dungeons/fractals and WvW with 60+% chance and 99% dmg ( which leaves me only about 2.5-2.6k armour and 15k health ) and can be impressively survivable thanks to AH and life steal.
It’s not very forgiving of mistakes though, and does require some fast reactive aegis and block/shelter/invinci/blind skill mashing
It is a bit of a one-trick pony, and if Anet decide to nerf the food I’ll most likely rebalance the build with less crit damage and more armour/healing power.
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Don’t mind if SoA where to stick close while it’s inactive, but I like how it says put most of the time once it pops – In dungeon runs I like to gather up ranged opponents into it’s bubble and then go off to melee the others, and in WvW it’s nice for protecting seige equipment without having to stand near the gates.
I’ve been maining a guardian since before day 1 of gw2.
Shield of Avenger used to be a very rare skill to see used in dungeon runs or WvW ( it still is to some extent ), which was a shame, because it IS a nice utility.
WoR was used selectively in dungeons, depending on the encounter and a fair amount in WvW ( where it’s useful, but has too short a duration to turn the tide of battle to any great extent ).
In WvW they both have huge telegraphs.
I switch my utilities, weapons and traits around often during a dungeon run, but FoTM is the only instance which I feel I need to use both SoA and WoR almost all of the time.
So the question should not be: “Why doesn’t Anet nerf these skills?” but should be “Why doesn’t Anet change FoTM so these projectiles are no longer reflectable”.
They have done similar tweaks in past patches to make some attacks unblockable, purely because the guardian damage mitigation can be so good ( we ARE guardians after all ;-) ), so they just need to do the same for FoTM.
I really won’t be surprised if we do see something to that effect in up-coming patches.
Nope – sadly, bow of truth does not scale with healing power. Think of it as a 4k area HoT