Guild Wars 2

Mightymealworm.8409:

Vargamonth.2047:

It doesn’t really matter.
Spirit Rangers, like Minion necros, Spirit Weapon guardians or any other kind of petting zoo (except probably mesmer, which is unfortunately based on clones on every single build) needs to be unviable.
You can allow them to exist, but they can’t be competitive. Like many other things, they are annoying to watch and to play against and clearly unhealthy for the game.

Spirit weapon guardians? When was the last time you saw one of those? I actally did mess around with a set of them one time recently roaming in wvw. The guy who destroyed me told me he freaked out when he saw them cause he didn’t know what they were. Turned out they were harmless.

It’s just an example that came to me mind, probably because I main a guardian :P
Yes, they’re quite useless now, and the best for the game would be them to remain that way.

It’s not bad at all to have builds that can use a single spirit, minion or spirit weapon, but full specs just add A LOT of clutter. If you get several of these buids in the same teamfight, the game turns really disgusting to play.

It doesn’t really matter.
Spirit Rangers, like Minion necros, Spirit Weapon guardians or any other kind of petting zoo (except probably mesmer, which is unfortunately based on clones on every single build) needs to be unviable.
You can allow them to exist, but they can’t be competitive. Like many other things, they are annoying to watch and to play against and clearly unhealthy for the game.

It’s true that evade spam, like any other spam, is unhealthy for the game. However, while I’m OK with spam being toned down, I don’t think we need nor deserve a nerf on our surivival.

If they want to debunk us, there’s no need to do it through our defense capabilities, we also have tons of support that can be nerfed.
Our best conditions removals (Pure of Voice and Absolute Resolution)? AoE. Stability sources? AoE too. Protection sources? Mostly AoE. Shouts, Symbols, Consecrations, …
2 out of 3 elite skills we have are support, and the remaining one, Renewed Focus, recharges our virtues which are also half supportive.

The more allies, the stronger support becomes, so we have always performed in the teamfight point, which is where we are more effective.
If we need to be balanced to be on par with less supportive specs for this job, then there’s no chance for us to shine on close/far or wherever smaller scaled fights happen.

It’s not rocket science, most selfish builds run meditations for something.

I guess it’s going to depend on this:

Josh Davis.6015:

Guards, for example, have less access to condition removal than they did in the previous ‘bunker meta’ because of the fix to Pure of Voice. That said, with the proposed changes in the Dec 10th patch, I think we may see even more teams opt for bunker support outside of guardian. Not because guardian is sub-optimal, but because other professions will be able to fill that roll with varying flavor. (Engineer might be able to debunk points easier than other bunkers, but provides little AoE stability. Engineer support is seeing a buff so we could see some interesting things there as well…)

The trait will change in order to allow other professions to be competitive as mid/bunker support.
I’m a bit afraid of this, because Vigorous Precision is a keystone on guardian bunkering and likely to be overnerfed, ruining the class. It’s also fairly important for other build attempts, which really should get some kind of compensation.

I don’t know. I’ll be OK with all of this as long as other changes are made in order to make us competitive in other roles like close bunker or assaulter. If we remain pidgeonholed and we also have to share our food, it’s going to be disgusting.

Gutts.8791:

Guardians, healing signet, 2 virtues for defense as class unique skills and multiple blinds, without investing a single trait point. Blinds are a massive form of damage mitigation, especially since their “buff”.

I already answered that on a different topic, but here we go again:

Untraited healing signet (Signet of Resolve I guess) + virtue of resolve = 288 HPS
Mending (yes, Mending) = 262 HPS
Mending is far better at condition management, and still almost never picked in favor of Healing Signet, so I guess it’s fair to say that:

Healing Signet > Signet of Resolve + Virtue of Resolve (that’s one of the defensive virtues).

The other one is a block at the start of the fight (you’re obviously not going to open with a powerful attack, probably just with a bow auto) and a second one in demand with 90 second CD.

The only blinds an untraited guardian can use are on sword, greatsword and focus.
It’s almost impossible to blind any of your attacks on purpose with the focus cause ray of judgment has a 0.75s cast time (on par with earthsaker). Backbreaker is the only option, and the guardian should react at an almost inhuman speed (0.25s – latency).
If happens, it’s pure chance or warriors fault (using the attack after already being blinded).
Pretty much the same for the greatsword one (0.5s cast time). Can reliably blind backbreaker, anything else is pure luck.
The only real blind a untraited guardian can use against you is a10 second skill on the 1HSword. It’s also the gap closer, so if he uses it you’re free to earthsake away, benefit from your superior healing, swap to bow and check if he’s using a scepter too.

Guardians can beat Warriors, that’s true, but they do far less things than what you think without traiting for it.

Too situational.

For PvE, afaik, axe is the way to go for warrior. GS can be used as an offset for an extra evade and/or heavy burst through HB + WW (against a wall) so, thanks to Fast Hands, autos are almost never used.
For guardians it’s a Sword/Greatsword rotation, opening and finishing the GS part with WW, but with sword dealing more damage through autos when GS skills are off CD (and more damage overall I guess if just one of them can be chosen).

For PvP, there’s so much involved than there’s no answer at all.

Our weapon defensive capabilites are also fairly average.
Hammer grant us almost perma protection when we fight a dummy that endure all the slow attacks and let us keep fighting inside our symbol, but that’s all.
We have a few blinds (only the 1HSword one is useful in this resgard) and blocks (3 every 40 seconds on focus, 1 every 15 on mace; warrior beats us here), some minor regeneration/healing sources here and there (nothing really serious unless standing still on a mace symbol or wielding a staff, a pure support weapon with next to zero offensive capabilities), but nothing like 3 low CD evades in the same weapon set (S/D ranger), evade spam + weakness + disengage + stealth (S/D thief), … Not even talking about our laughable kiting/disengage capabilities.
Seriously, our weapons don’t make us extremely tanky, not even close.

Traits are what make us tanky. We spec for it.
There are some easily taken ones, like almost perma-vigor for 5 points in honor and 5 seconds of protection (twice, once before and once after Renewed focus) for 5 in virtues. Even with that, it’s still fairly common for any guardian that doesn’t go full bunker, with healing power amulet and every single trait point in defense/support (and even for some of them), to still invest 30 points in valor for healing on meditations or altruistic healing.

Calling baseline survivable to someone who is investing about half of his trait points, sometimes even more, in defense and also picks a defensive elite, is completely unfair.
It’s like calling a Warrior baseline survivable because he can go for adrenal health + cleansing ire + shout/banner heal.
It’s survivable? Hell yes. Baseline? No way. There are 50 trait points right there.
We aren’t even chosen as mid point bunkers because of our survival, which is on par and even behind of what some other classes can achieve, but because our probably unmatched support on top of it.

PD: Reading everything again I feel I completely misunderstood what you were meaning with “baseline”. It’s probably closer to support than defense but, anyways, stupid wall of test what I wrote … hope someone finds it interesting :P

Artaz.3819:

Vargamonth.2047:

AndrewSX.3794:

JonPeters.5630:

Warriors by nature have a lot of survivability, and we need them to make a choice between heavy control and heavy damage.

Warrior’s baseline isn’t the survivability. It’s dmg.
You have already a class that have a good baseline survivability, it’s called Guardian, do you remember of him? But you never gave them the “You have good base suvivability, now pick up CC or Dmg” choice, he doesn’t have neither of them, so is locked in a bunker role.

This must be a joke.
Guardian baseline survivability is lackluster at best. We can become pretty tanky with serious trait investment, that’s true, but baseline … just no.

As oppose to baseline for Warrior? I’m not sure I understand…

This is coming from a player with 8 80s (one of each class) by the way so I kind of question how you came to this idea. Just the baseline Guardian mechanic of the passive Virtues and on-demand Virtue activations tells me what I already know from playing a Guardian (compared to Warrior).

Guardians ‘tank’ better and have better defensive weapon set abilities like access to Protection Boon (and talents that enhance those abilities to be used more often or for greater results) but there is nothing wrong with that. But to call, Guardian baseline defense lackluster is …

am I being trolled? You win.

Lets talk about the passive virtues and on-demand activations.
We have a 84 bonus HPS through Virtue of Resolve. Sounds like a baseline survival boost but:

Signet of Resolve (our highest HPS heal): 203 HPS, 1 condition removed every 10 seconds if it’s not on CD (40 seconds).
Mending: 262 HPS, 3 conditions removed every 20 seconds.

With both signet and passive we slightly overheal (287 against 262) a warrior heal with better condition management than ours. The difference might be even smaller because healing power coefficients favour the warrior one (2 against 1.25).
No chances against the 392 of healing signet, but I guess it’s unfair since we have a minor conditon removal. Let’s try with Shelter then.

Shelter (152 HPS) + VoR (84) = 236 HPS
In order to match Healing Signet we would need to mitigate over 4,5k damage on our slightly over 1 second block channel, which is quite situational.

My point can be adressed better leaving the warrior for a moment and taking a look at the following thief skill:
http://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Withdraw

Pretty much the same mechanic, yet the thief one outheals the guardian one (Virtue of Resolve included) ad can be used twice as often. It also can’t be hard-countered by some skills like “Fear me”, which is pretty funny btw.
Even if we have a baseline bonus HPS through VoR, our heal skills have so low HPS that is common for us to end on par with other classes (and sometimes even behind), so it doesn’t add baseline survivability at all.

Our second survival virtue is courage. We usually start every fight with an aegis up, which is quite useless since everybody knows it no decent player will open the fight with a powerful attack. After that we can use another one on demand on 90 second CD.

That’s all our baseline survivablity, a bonus HPS that’s next to a scam, and a single block every 90 seconds, that I guess should mitigate 7.5k health, which is the amount the warrior is above us.

AndrewSX.3794:

JonPeters.5630:

Warriors by nature have a lot of survivability, and we need them to make a choice between heavy control and heavy damage.

Warrior’s baseline isn’t the survivability. It’s dmg.
You have already a class that have a good baseline survivability, it’s called Guardian, do you remember of him? But you never gave them the “You have good base suvivability, now pick up CC or Dmg” choice, he doesn’t have neither of them, so is locked in a bunker role.

This must be a joke.
Guardian baseline survivability is lackluster at best. We can become pretty tanky with serious trait investment, that’s true, but baseline … just no.

Kyle.3856:

From the ele forums:

Tyler Chapman.1832:

Treborlavok.3504:

just like the guardians 5 trait for vigor on crit… its ok for them to have a 10 second single condition cure at adept…?

The Guardian and Mesmer vigor traits are something that were on the table and will be on the table for change in the future. We don’t like those traits being that easily accessible. While they haven’t yet been changed as long as our thoughts don’t change internally they are part of the vigor rework we want to do.

………. Uh oh….

I don’t want to speak too loud without seeing the whole picture, but this is our only vigor granting (or anything realted to endurance management) tool. We don’t have neither inferior choices like the ele scepter trait (not even alternatives, like vigor on cantrip use) nor a single utility / weapon skill that grants vigor.
It seems like they somehow still think that our low health pool, low mobility, hard and soft CC lacking class is just naturally tanky thanks to an aegis and those 80 hp/sec.
I guess they should also make harder to take Inspired Virtue so we definitely lose any middle ground between holder/support with next to zero damage and 10/30/30/0/0 full burst specs.

I don’t mind if there are some achievements tied to content completion, which needs to be something like what we have now (but far less grindy) for open world LS. They indicate you have experienced and completed the content, which makes total sense to me.
There should be a lot more tied to true challenges, tasks that deserve the achievement name, but if we look at how the whole achievement system works (with tons of AP tied to dailies, monthlies and other temporary content) there’s no reason at all for this. It probably would cause more harm that good.

I would be more than happy, however, if some kind of challenge (with some exclusive reward attached to it) were delivered from time to time.
After more than a year, “Light Up the Darkness” is probably the only one that I’ve felt like a real accomplishment, and I got rewarded just with a few meaningless APs.

It’s a good change IMHO.
It allow lfg queues to be shorter without really losing any depth because the trinity doesn’t really promote any kind of teamplay by itself.

While classic MMOs might seem a great teamwork show for someone unfamiliar with them, the truth is that each player is only concerned by his role/job.
Some kind of coordination might be required in order to avoid certain issues, like several healers overlapping heals and wasting mana or a DPS overaggroing a tank, but nothing really different from what we can have here with several guardians popping aegis.
The real teamwork usually comes from encounter specific mechanics, and those are fairly independant from combat basics and can be implemented in both trinity and non-trinity games.

In the end, the complexity depends on the population the game is aimed for.

Imagine a no-trinity game where most bosses hit like a truck, have an insane run speed and are pretty resilient to movement impairment effects. Also imagine that proximity is the main aggro trigger and that, in order to disengage and swap aggro, the current tank needs to outrun the boss.
In this scenario, one party member should aggro the boss and keep it busy burning evades andblocks (that should be less affordable than what we have in GW2), maybe enduring a couple of hits if using defensive gear and/or aided by ally protection/weakness. Once out of resources, a speed difference should be created (timing swiftness and chill, for example) in order to disengage, and another player should become the new aggro bearer.
You can have this, and you still can have as much big AoEs, adds and encounter specific mechanics as you want on top of it. It would be obviously more complex that
what we currently have, but it would also be a nightmare for PUGs / without VOIP.

In the same way, you can have a trinity MMO where some healing tasks are more mana demanding than others and healers have to swap during the fight and/or where the tank aggroes with spike abilities (like “for the next X seconds you deal 200% more aggro, your allies deal 50% les aggro and you take 50% more damage”) and players need to sync both burst Healing and DPS with it in order to beat the enrage timer. Complex, beautiful, but fairly unPUGable.

If you aim content for PUGs and fairly casual players, mechanics just need to be simple. It has nothing to do with having or no a trinity.

The x/x/30/5/5 in not amazing and it’s overshadowed by some current builds. However, we are expecting some serious damage nerfs on hambow warrior and spirit rangers (through burning upkeep) so things might be better in a near future.

Radiant power is clearly superior to fiery wrath, no doubt about it, and Focused mind, even coupled with Inner fire, is still inferior to the raw 20% critchance of a Radiance build (which can also be coupled with Inner fire, even if I felt it’s a bit overkill unless you wear soldiers amulet).
The zeal build can, however, pop similar bonuses for a burst or a couple of attack chains once the enemy has burnt some defensive resources and the damage is likely to land (losing only the damage from Powerful Blades, which would be close to a no brainer with this reworked Glacial Heart and after being boosted to 10%, and probably a different runeset).
I also feel that those 0.3 chill seconds (from Zeal and Lyssa, which is a great asset, but a bit overkill again for a non Soldier Radiance build) are quite powerful.

I don’t really know. I like OP’s idea a lot, I just feel it could be too powerful on a 10/30/30/0/0 zeker build and, after looking at some numbers through this answer, maybe also for a 0/30/30/5/5 on Soldier/zerk + Lyssa (not sure about this, it would depend on where meta shifts afer the patch).

Red.3572:

Basic auto pressure on it’s own, no matter how much of it you land (thanks to chilled) isn’t enough to kill most targets before they can kill you because as soon as you stray too far away from heavy investment in Valour/Honour and stop reserving focus for defence on 1 hander specs, sustain drops off the face of the earth. Also if VoJ’s proc turns into a ‘root’ you actually lose the extra pressure you would have gotten from the burning.

From an SPvP stand-point Med’s 1-hander Burst guard is insanely fun to play, but it’s just not that useful. As a roamer it’s too slow. As a team-fight character, it’s weaker than other class options, and even other Guard builds! Like say the 0/5/30/30/5 hammer/staff shout build or a symbol variant is like 5 times more useful. Even then you’d still probably prefer a Necro there as that class is ridiculous.

Think on a 20/10/30/5/5 with lyssa runes.
It still keeps the sustain of a x/x/30/5/5 medi build and it’s on a decent 46% base crit chance (up to 66% triggering fury with focused mind), 50% crit damage and over 2k power.
The chill goes up to 1.3 secods thank to runes and points in zeal and can still benefit a lot from fiery wrath if you pair the sword with a torch.

It loses only raw damage.
If you chose power / crit damage runes (like 5 scholar + 1 divinity) over precision ones, the 0/30/30/5/5 build would be ahead just by 20% crit chance (which you can get eventually from focused mind), 10% raw damage from radiant power (which you now again can get eventually from fiery wrath) and 10% crit damage + another raw 5% (likely 10% after decemper patch) which you can’t cover at all.
I think it would be even more solid than a 0/30/30/5/5 with the suggested frozen heart in Valor.

Allocating the trait in zeal just prevents coupling it with a 10/30/30/0/0, which is squishier but the one that can get the really crazy damage numbers and melt people when aided by allies.

Red.3572:

Guardian burst is so obvious that without hard CC it could never be a Hambow 2.0…

With the proposed change Guardian damage would not be mainly burst based anymore. That’s the problem.

Think on a x/30/30/x/x Sw/T Sc/Fc.
A full sword chain is enough to proc a chill (and also deal huge damage), which makes the next one fairly easy to land, so it’s almost a must for your enemy to evade it.
The gap opened by the dodge roll, which is currently enough to force you into the scepter, can be cut now just using cleansing flame, which can hit 10 times and proc chill twice, granting you melee range again.
Your enemy pretty much needs to evade twice to get out of melee and not be demolished by sword autos, while you still have fairly decent gap closers to counter gap openers and some resources, including your own evades, to avoid being cced or slowed.
This kind of pressure which forces your enemy to burn dodge rolls makes a lot easier for you to connect a burst or hard hits like zealots fire, or even better, to stay in melee and eat alive pretty much everyone just with autoattaks.

The current build is indeed lackluster on a 1v1 enviroment against someone who knows how it works (there are some specs however that still don’t have an easy time avoiding the burst because they lack invul frames and instant cleanses), but the damage it can dish out, if unnoticed on a teamight or aided by ally cc, is insane.

As happened with necromancers, in order to strengthen the build when on its own, the change could improve up to OP level something that’s currently competitive but might need specific team setups to shine.
That’s why I suggest Zeal (a modified one indeed, one that gets rid of those symbol minors, merge them into a master, and put there something not only useful for a few specific builds), in order to allow a build that could be stronger for soloQ and/or WvW roaming, without boosting a fairly competitive existing one.

Dynnen.6405:

A melee class being able to keep targets in range is OP? Are you serious?

I didn’t say that; it makes complete sense for guardians to have a tool like this
In fact, I went even further and suggested a way to apply fairly long lasting chills on JI and Purging Flames.

What a I think could be OP is being able to have it on a x/30/30/x/x build, which actually has kitten good damage/sustain numbers in soldiers and hits like a truck in berzerkers.
The build is fairly balanced right now, relying on allies to snare enemies or on heavy bursts when on its own. Being granted with a sticking tool (which I would pick over fury on meditatios every single day) is maybe the last step on creating a Hambow 2.0.

I’ve thought on something like this for a long time. I don’t think, however, it should remain in Valor.

This change feels mainly PvP oriented (it could be used for some weird anchoring in PvE, but I don’t feel it specially gamechanging), with Valor already being quite a powerful traitline for this game mode.
A lot of offensive PvP guardian builds heavily invest in valor for meditations. Specs like x/30/30/x/x hit like a truck, so giving them the ability to reliably stick to their oponents could be OP.

IMHO it should be a master Zeal trait. This way, it would be impossible to have it on the previous build, forcing the guardian to give up either sustain or damage.

Another option could be a Grandmaster Zeal trait “VoJ and utility skills apply chill istead of burning”. This would allow using tools like Judges Intervention and Purging Flames as long lasting chill sources without boosting torch into a monster.

Zeal traitline should be slighty modified in any case in order to make this kind of traits appealing. The way it is now, with all those symbol traits as minors, it feels a waste to invest on.

Trying to adress Guardian issues through damage boosts doesn’t make any sense to me.
Guardian doesn’t lack damage, it actually hits pretty hard tbh.

The problem is that he can’t stick to their target by his own means, so he needs to be built around burst, trying to deal huge damage spikes aided by Judges Intervention and/or Immobilizes, all of them on fairly long CDs.
If you try to make the guardian more sustainable, you have to invest so many trait points for healing and condi removal (mainly because most of them are AoE, so situationally much more powerful than just self sustain tools) that you end with no damage at all (for sPvP, where you can’t mix and match stats and/or use foods to cover some weaknesses).

Zeal desperately needs sticking tools, like switness/cripple/chill sources. Without them, there’s no option for pressure in sPvP. It’s just either bunker/support or burst.

Khenzy.9348:

By the changes, they seem to want full DPS Guardians to play something like this: http://gw2skills.net/editor/?fUAQNAR8dlUgqCnGSOEf4ESmiC8AtUIQHU1j45e8QA-TsAg0CtIATBmDMDYSwsgNsYVyuAA

Precast SoW>JI>WW… etc. Instakill, stability/blind stomp and get out.

I honestly don’t like this approach, I expected a heavy armor apparently selfsustainable holy (and shiny!) Warrior with few hard CCs but being one who withstands a battle for a while and wittles you down with fierce but powerful strikes with more slower paced and tactical manouvers; not this insta damage spike getin-getout squishy DPSer, it feels like a thief with no stealth and heavy armor (wtf?). I just don’t like how that feels on a Guardian.

That support GS/Staff build running around is far from a DPS build.

Why did Warriors became all I wanted in a Guardian?

PS: Kindled Zeal is still going to be absolute kitten btw. (lel ~+230 condi. dmg.).

Completely agreed.

I always expected Guardians to be sustained fighters, with much lesser burst than what a Warrior could achieve, but better tools to win an attrition fight.
Most damage oriented guardian builds are, however, burst fighters, and pretty decent ones tbh. If you try to build a sustained Guardian you end either with a bunker/support build that does no damage at all or with something that’s easily outperformed by a warrior.
It’s quite annoying to have my main character behaving the opposite of what I (like most people I guess) expected when I choose and created it :P

displacedTitan.6897:

Didnt we just have the Aetherpath that everyone complained about being to hard??

These forums are filled with people who dont know what they want and then come to rage about it.

The people complaining about mindless zerging is not usually the same that found Aetherpath hard.

If they give rewards through sPvP, which sounds cool, it should have nothing to do with glory (or glory system should be completely reworked).

Mad King says needs to be toned down.
It make sense for the first lunatic to have these skills or other kind of advantage in order to prevent a horde of aggressive villagers to kitten him for the whole duration of the match, but granting every ghost the ability to spam MKS over and over creates a huge snowball effect.

The odds of lunatics winning are so high that there’s a lot of people that just commit suicide or let a ghost kill them as soon as the match starts.
Also, a lunatic win means, even with the 5 minute mark, a shorter game, so AP farmers kill themselves too and encourage other players to do so.

When half of the players have become lunatics in the first couple of minutes, there’s not really much villagers can do and the minigame loses any fun it could had.

Zanryu.3417:

And a Necro or Engi can have good defenses and retaliate with strong conditions. I’ve seen quite a few of both stick on a point by themselves with pretty decent degrees of success. I admit I can’t speak for the higher ranks of tPvP but I don’t imagine a Warrior is so much better than either of those at applying counter-pressure with holding something other than mid in the same way it’s not better than a Guardian at holding mid.

I also don’t play tpvp at top lvl, not even close, and I don’t really know how truly effective for a team can be a warrior holding close. It would depend on team compositions I guess.

I just wanted to bust the myth of guardian being some kind of immortal toon. It’s not more tanky than other bunker specs, it just offers awesome (probably unmatched) support while being pretty decent at bunkering.

Guardians are prefered as mid (or any point where teafights are likely to happen) bunkers because of their support.
On their own, they aren’t more tanky than what a warrior (and some other classes) can be and they can’t apply real counterpressure. That’s why you rarely see Guardians holding close point (or any point where the fight is small scaled or the defender is on its own) in any serious match.

Guardian heal is not invulnerability btw. A warrior slots “Fear me” and guardian is either forced to use SYG for healing or pretty much done.
It’s also interesting to point that on bunker spec 2 instant warrior shouts heal pretty much the same as shelter, so that thing about no burst healing on warrior …

KorKor.9452:

The drop rates are so bad on it inside the event that nobody does the event at all. They go grind dungeons or champions to get gold so they can get it and the price of candy corn gets even worse as a result. Since NOBODY AT ALL is farming it.

But this is pretty much what ANET has been doing for months.

Every game needs money sinks in order to avoid massive inflation, and since taxes are probably one of the most powerful tools in this regard, the game encourages using the TP through RNG drops and/or unrealistic farms.

This is not something bad on its own (while I feel much more inmersive to play different content for different rewards, a TP centered game allows you to stick to the content you really like, being fairly consistent with the manifesto).
The game just fails allowing this to happen where it really matters, where there’s power creep involved (an obvious reason to prefer some item over what you already had) like with current ascended weapons or ascended rings some time ago.

For cosmetics and other vanity items, something I would understand to have to go out of my way in order to get, the TP emphasis and “play what you want” maxim are, however, almost universal. There’s just a “little” issue with this … rewards on different activities are FAR from normalized.
There are always some activities available with extremely high income/time ratios. It was CoF1 spamming for a long time, folllowed by some LS “design failures”, like gauntlet and aetherblade farms, and currently is probably about champion trains and alt t6 node gathering. Even dungeon rewards, balanced in this regard no long ago, are in obvious mismatch with the challenge and the amount of time required to beat them.
Most of the time it doesn’t really matter what kind of item you are looking for, be it a precursor, a Bloody Prince / Tequatl mini, some seasonal weapon skin … those activities are the best bet to get it and cut the replay value of most other content by A LOT.

Xae Isareth.1364:

^what the crud am I seeing?

Even if those warriors can’t DPS for crud, that kind of bunkering should not happen. Normally I’m very much against nerfs, but Warriors need a serious nerf.

The funny thing is that this kind of warrior, with their high base HP, can wear shaman (apothecary for PvE/WvW) and actually inflict decent condition damage when using sword/longbow. Not great, but clearly higher than what a bunker/healway guardian does.

For WvW healway guardian still heals for more tough. Not sure about sPvP, probably only if there’s a teamfight and he can benefit from AH.

Probably Zeker weapons and trinkets with knight armor, soldier runes and energy sigils is one of the most balanced things you can achieve. Zerging in WvW might encourage eventually getting some cleric trinkets.
As starting weapon set GS/Staff could do the trick.

You can also go full berserker with scholar, which excels in PvE, and build for meditation burst when roaming in WvW (which doesn’t feel guardian-ish, but it’s pretty effective). Not the best option for zerging tough.

Most animations on CC moves are telegraphed enough to be avoided, and you still can use a stun breaker if you get caught. The only real offender to this rule is Skull Crack, which has its own downcomes (As a Guardian, a class that’s arguably more forced to melee than warriors, I find annoying to face specs that I should fight through kiting, but this is a different topic).

The problem is on either the rate of application or the sustain.

If you manage to avoid a CC move, there won’t be adrenaline loss and the stun will be ready again on a really short time.
Add to this that Mace and Hammer have both access to weakness (which means you’re going to have less endurance than usual at your disposal.) and you are really going to need a good amount of defensive tools.

If the warrior is using a heavy CC build (lets say Double Mace / Hammer), there are classes that can hardly avoid that much without kiting, and even then, the warrior still has access to things like berserker stance in order to nullify movement impairments.

Other classes might avoid a full initial CC discharge using long CDs, but this kind of warrior is not exactly the one that gets pretty useless after failing it (like the old bulls charge / frezy /100b one). It has enough sustain to remain alive and using CCs over and over for quite a long time, being able to ensure a win by attrition.
They get too much sustain just by slotting Healing Signet and going 20 in defense for another small passive regen and one of the best condi removals in the whole game (which also helps them a lot with adrenaline management).

Even in the most positive case where you can indefinitely counter every CC / weakness application, even if you can ensure a win with perfect play, there’s still a problem because neither every fight is 1on1 nor every GW2 player is a top PvPer.

Even if they can be completely outplayed, they are rewarded too much for every single mistake on enemy side while being survivable enough for several attempts on that mistake to happen and/or to commit a few ones themselves before being downed.
They are powerful characters at top level play. Below that level (and still fairly over average) they’re just monsters.

In fact, clones should not be destroyed, as it happens with warrior adrenaline :P

Mrbig.8019:

Ezrael.6859:

The only meta DPS Guardians fit into is anti-Thief. Which is why MrBig is doing his best to troll and stir the pot, all in his own favour. Nerf Rock! Paper is fine.

what an astounishngly well thought and smart argument.

dude dps guardians are fine, I would say even borderline OP now that you can avoid going into that horrible tratline which radiance is.

play with sceptet focus and gs, 30-0-30-10 and enjoy, than you can come back here and talk again.

silly people are silly

That build has really good damage output.
Survivality wise it has no access to protection and, if triple meditation with CD reduction and Monk Focus, pretty much the same HPS as a warrior with healing signet and 20 points in defense, just with a much smaller health pool and worse condition removal.
It has horrible mobility; has a couple of gap closers (leap and JI, if slotted) but can’t keep the enemy at close range after that.
You pretty much need to perform some combo like landing an immobilize (the only condition you apply your enemy has to worry about and save removals for) and porting with JI (36 sec CD if traited) while using Whirling Wrath. Shield of Judgment can be added to the equation for a better telegraphed all-in move.

The spec hits like a truck and can be really effective if you build a team that supports it with movement boosts and impairments. If not, it has horrible mobility to perform as a roamer and is pretty weak at 1on1 (point defender/assaulter) as long as your opponent knows about meditation guardians and JI bursts.

milo.6942:

so you want to be an unstoppable juggernaut?

That depends on where the chasing mechanics are allocated.
Guardians currently have lesser base sustain and way less health than warriors. We’re usually tanky because we invest a lot of trait poits for it (our “offensive” traitlines, specially Zeal, are lackluster at best).
Granting guardians the ability to stick to their enemies through Zeal would create either a “unstoppable juggernaut” with some serious weaknesses or no “juggernaut” at all.

It’s an extremely awful design, a strong effect that neither you nor you’re enemy have control over.
It could have been triggered, for example, on mighty blow use (without crit RNG), together with some kind of icy animation around the hammer when available (and probably an ICD reduction too, since it would be easier to avoid this way).
Developers chose however to add it to the plethora of RNG effects we already had.

I strongly believe that having traits directly modifying some weapon skills / utilities for additional effects is healthier for the game than these ICD limited on-crit / on-hit procs.

After a quite high amount of weeks without changes, I was expecting a big balance patch this time tbh. I guess I should expect nothing in the future so I can be happy with polishing, bug fixing and minor tweaks.

The way btween 400 and 500 crafting level is what I really find atrocious.

You cannot craft ascended components until you’re at 450.
The first 25 points are OK since you can get them just refining t6 materials, but it’s preety much exo crafting from 425 to 450, exos that suddenly flood the market and are not BiS items anymore.
If a future extension of crafting disciplines was expected, then the cap should had been set at 450 long time ago. This way people could had it leveled just by regular use of professions. .
Right now, it doesn’t matter how much you used your crafting disciplines, be it for self gearing or marketing, over the last year; you need to start from scratch and you’re forced to sell whatever you get under production costs or just recycle it for a chance on dark matter.
If the cap was expected to remain at 400 forever and was extended only because a late development decision, then ascended componet crafting should have started just at 400.

When you reach 450, you can finally craft ascended components. You should had been able to do that long before but at least you’re free now from that stupid exo crafting … until you realize that those componets can’t level you past 475.
At this point you (probably) have enough material for an ascened weapon in your bank, but neither you can craft it nor you can keep leveling your profession through components. You’re forced to exotics, again, and a nice bunch of them to be honest.
It’s unnatural. It’s just a cheap resource sink, a development choice that’s related to some kind of game wide macroeconomical reasons but which doesn’t make any sense at all for an individual player.

With few words, ascended component crafting should have started from whatever the previous crafting cap was, and it should have been enough to level the profession up to ascended weapon crafting. What we have now is a bad joke.

The last nail in the coffin is that you can’t even sell the weapons. You can sell some components, but since having the profession leveled to 500 is an absolute must in order to get the weapons themselves, the market is limited to some anxious buyers that want the time gating gone.
It also forces every player who want an ascended weapon to level a profession to 500, increasing even more the number of exotics that flood the market. It makes every low tier material to skyrocket in price too, since they’re used for both ascended componenets and profession leveling (This allows newcomers to make some money from gathering at least, probably the only one positive thing I can find on this disaster).
I don’t want even think on what’s gonna happen with ascended armor if it’s delivered on a similar way. I mean, there are neither cloth nor leather nodes, they’re get mainly from recycle and loot is usually delivered at character level (usually 80). It’s gonna be “fun” to see tons of players farming with alts and/or zerging low level events looking for recyclable rags.

There’s a lot of complaints about time gating too. While I’m not a big fan of time gated content, I don’t see it as awful as many other things.
From the perspective of profession leveling you can speed it up through exos (more resource sink) and from a market perspective, it’s currently the only thing that allows some kind of market to even exist :S

A lot of complaints too from WvW players. I supported them when ascended rings appeared, since they forced them to invest too many hours on PvE content.
I have to disagree this time; every single material needed for ascendeds can be obtained in WvW.
I completely understand that node mining is not exactly the task a WvW player loves to do, but neither do I as a PvE player. As a dungeon/sPvP player, I’m absolutely forced to activities I dislike in order to get ascendeds.

Finally I don’t want to invest too much time writing about ascended weapons as regular drops, neither about their extreme rarity nor about their random stats.
I just want to point that it could had been cool to improve some loot, like fractal weapons for example, to ascended, but for some reason developers thought that BiS gear fit extremelly well with the challenging nature of champ training (which is stupidly profitable even without this).

This thread suffers the same problem as many opthers. Some people seem to talk about sPvP while others do about WvW.

IMHO fury perfectly fits on a critical damage (but no precision) traitline.
For speed soruces / snares, Zeal would be the best source, first because it currently is a crappy traitline and second, because it would prevent the Guardian to stick to enemies while keeping a whole kitten nal of defensive tools.

As a player who usually runs with AH I would say that’s a mediocre choice. It’s, however, a safe bet for PUGing or running with a group with low damage capabilities (as I usually do).
Its effectiveness also varies a lot between dungeons. While I find it quite useless for Arah and I always swap it in favor of a Sw/Fc full radiance build for Caudecus, I think it has been a good choice for the SE path 2 I’ve run a couple ours ago.

A defensive gearcheck cannot really happen because every damage source is avoidable. Even if it were unavoidable, different classes have different base armors and health pools so any damage source that would requiere a elementalist to wear ascendeds wouldn’t be enough for a warrior (the opposite would kill the ele over and over). Not gonna happen.
Offensive gearchecks, like hard enrage timers, are not going to happen because the game is not balanced around each class achieving the same damage output. A soft timer could be possible, but it would easily beatable without ascendeds as long as the game doesn’t force players to choose gear/traits for full offense.

The only way to see ascendeds required (or highly encouraged at least) is through Agony Resistance (or another infusion related defensive stat, which I doubt is going to happen since it would force player to have pointless duplicated gear), which seems something limited to fractals.

Berserker “issue” is not going to change unless ANet releases content that is truly designed for organized groups.

Berserker itself is not the problem, it probably has too high crit damage numbers (specially with ascended trinkets) but it’s not the only damage boost “elite” groups make use of. Those groups also cap might and vulnerability stacks and get a lot of raw %damage increase from runes, traits and sigils (like night/slayer combos).

If content will be designed for organized groups, things like massive might/vulnerability stacks, optimal sigils and damage oriented builds (maybe not optimized, but clearly oriented) should be expected. Then, if a bossfight is designed to last 3 minutes on average, a fully damage optimized group is hardly going to finish it in less than a minute (and I’m probably being generous).
The current zeker issue is caused by a lot of PUGs don’t stacking boons and running weird things like full PVT with dolyak runes and sigils of blood so, if you want enemies to last enough against optimized damage groups (so they have time to do something more than explode after failing their first attacks cause a blind/aegis/whatever, which is what happens in most cases now), then every single silver mob could easily feel like fighting a champion for many pick up groups, which is just ridiculous.

The problem is that, even if ANet will release this kind of organized team oriented content, we would still be reading complaints every day, just for different reasons.

The first think we should discuss here is what alt-friendly means. In my opinion, it’s absolutely alt-unfriendly.

In order to be truly alt-fiendly a game should:
a) allow to perform some given task which a character that’s most suited for it even if the reward is intended for a different toon.
b) not exclude any of your characters from getting a reward hat you already got on another one.
And also may (this goes further than alt-friendliness, in fact, is alt-encouraging):
c) allow to gather efforts on different toons in order to achieve something beyond the possibilities of a single character.

GW2 fullfills the first point extremely well.
Almost everything you get that is not binding free, is actually account bound. This means that you can get dungeon tokens and other currencies/items with an already geared character (or just one you feel more confortable with).
Unfortunately, this is not a game where you become rich efficiently farming in some spot with some specific build not one with clear roles where you would want to have every option covered. In GW2 (even if probably not with the same efficiency) you can complete every content with every character, anything you wanted the alt for should be doable with your actually geared one, so a commodity that allows you to gear up a toon without actually using it doesn’t feel like a great advantage (except maybe for WvW).

GW2 is, however, incredibly unfriendly as it refers to point B.
Every reward/currency you get is account bound in the worst scenario, but a lot them are also time gated account wide.
Every daily achievement completion you’re going to receive a laurel, which can be used for buying ascended trinkets. It doesn’t matter which char completed the dailies, the laurel is account bound and you will be able to use it on any of your toons, which is great and completely satisfies point A.
However, once you get your daily laurel on a toon, you’re prevented from getting another one on a different char, so it’s just impossible to progress with several charcaters at the same time even if you have enough time to do so.

The main reason for this is that point A is so massively present across all the game, that fulfilling point B would automatically lead to fulfilling point C too (which is more alt-encouraging than alt-friendly).
In the laurel case, since they’re account bound, if you could complete dailies and get a laurel on each of your toons, you would be able not only to gear all of them simultaneously (which is fine) , but also to gather every laurel and gear a single character much faster than what a alt-less player would do.

There are already some tasks that break this rule and simultaneously cover A, B and C points.
The most notorious one is gathering, where there are some character based time gated nodes, and which is pretty weird btw if we think on the incredible gameplay diversity you can experience wandering maps looking for wood.
Another ones would be being rewarded with a Tequatl orange dragon box and, as far as I know, fractals.

It may be surprising to rate fractals as alt-friendly since fractal level is character bound, but there’s an explanation for that.
Point A is perfectly fulfilled in fractals. If you get a ring by chance, you can use it on any of your charcaters; you also have every relic (regular and pristine) available in the wallet for any of your toons.
The main difference is that, as far as I know (haven’t tried it for a long time), point B, an by extension point C, are also fulfilled. Yes, having to work on your fractal level with every new toon is annoying as hell, but at least it doesn’t prevent you from getting pristines in multiple characters.
The sad point, however, is that fractals have different reward chests at different tiers, so there’s no problem on actually doing multiple runs and getting several ring chances / pristines with a single character that’s leveled enough. You would need a really really long time investment in order to apreciate that B and C are at your disposal too.

Honestly, the only things that grant some kind of benefit to alt users are crafting, where you can level a couple of profs on every character avoiding swap taxes (you don’t even need to level up the alts, so it’s not exactly an alt-friendly feature) and gathering, which is, as I said before, one of the most stupid places to encourage alt usage.
Then you have some idiotic alt-friendly features like sharing you tPvP rating between characters so there’s a clear matchmaking inconsistency (added to the natural inconsistency of the system itself) depending what character you’re using.
The rest of the game just offers the commodity to share loot between your characters (which mostly encourages not playing with the alts at all) at the cost of not being able to have more than one toon up to date.

Shield 5 is perfectly fine.

Shield 4, however, I find it a bit lackluster.
It’s mainly an AoE protection, which is fine, but current meta Guardian usually has some other sources of AoE prot for teamfights (hold the line and activated courage, both easier to land and with higher prot duration).
IMHO this skill should have something added that would encourage enemies to avoid it, something like weakness application or CD reduction per each enemy hit. Honorable Shield or Glacial Heart traits granting Shield of Judgment 2-3 second chill application would be awesome, much more useful than those 90 toughness points and much more reliable than an ICD hammer crit.

I honestly think that having traits that directly modify or add effects to some skills (chill application on SoJ, blast finisher on SoA detonation, this kind of things) is much more interesting and healthy for the game than those ICD procs and even the passives.

haviz.1340:

Once again you described gw1 model. Mobs do move out of AoEs and they do have randomized groups. Gw1 model was initially assuming pve to be a training ground for pvp – three missions in crystal desert were the best example of that.

I know, I know I’ve several hours invested in GW1.
It still had its AI flaws, like monsters not stop casting spells or attacking while affected by certain curses, so you could wreck/disable large groups just with a well placed skill, and LoS was still there making AoE skills absolutely dominant. Even with that, I still find the model much more engaging and fun than the current one.
It would also be slightly different here since “counter” type skills are not so devastating and we have active defenses instead of healers (a key skill could be avoided and force the group to a plan B ). I honestly think it could work wonders.

haviz.1340:

That would be awesome. But there is always one fundamental flaw, ai is not human and you can always find a way to exploit that fact.

It’s designers work to try to make the AIs as solid as possible.
They will always perform on a scripted way and be “exploitable” up to some degree. They probably will suck at kiting and won’t easily avoid AoEs just by moving (it would be “fun” to see this while a ranger pet burns to death inside a big red circle), that’s why they probably should have higher HP pools than human players.
Design flaws that could have been miss (like wasting interrupts against a shelter or using stunbreakers against 1 sec dazes) can also be solved by patches.
You can even randomize spawns, picking enemies from a pool of 10 or more templates, so a given cheesing tactic can’t be used every single time.

If groups find a way to easily beat those encounters, that’s OK (it probably takes more teamplay that the current fights; just that sounds like a step forward to me). It’s still PvE and there’s no reason to try to exactly replicate PvP (that’s what PvP is for :P), just to make some fight PvP-like in order to improve teamplay and encourage the use of many tools that are currently neglected (because they’re mainly balanced around PvP).

As I said, I would love to experience it at least for once, and I encourage ANet to try to design some fight like this for any upcoming LS patch and see how it works (probably won’t happen because it feels like an insane pugbuster :P).

Lets think on a group of veteran/silver mobs (3/4 should be fine) that are coded to not be baited by LoS (or the fight mechanics / room designed to avoid that) and try to behave human-like (they have weapon swap, endurance bar, heals, cleanses, stunbreakers, …).
A group like this could spawn whenever an (interesting if possible) boss goes into the next phase (with different mechancis and skillset, if possible), being invulnerable and gaining health in the meanwhile, so the longer it takes you to finish the adds, the longer the next phase will be.

Suddenly, everything changes. The current tactics (stacking in melee, maximizing boons, while trying to perform maximum DPS rotations and avoiding hits, be it by regular dodges, aegis or whatever) will probably be still viable against the boss itself, but not necesarily with the adds.
You hardly can melee stack and full DPS against a GS/S phantasm mesmer that will knockback you if you don’t pop up stability, evade twice (at least, he will probably have permavigor) in a random direction (so you can’t stack foes with an AoE CC skill and get them stacked for the entire fight), use phase retreat if out of endurance or immobilized, blink if cced, moa the most threatening damage source, … while still being AoEd by reamaining foes.
A fight like this would probably encourage the use of CCs, immobilizes, gap closers, ranged secondary weapons, interrupts, coditions, … and A LOT of teamplay.

Coding something like this (a proper AI) could probably be a nightmare, but I (and everyone looking for really fun and challenging content I guess) would love to experience it, at least for once.
I absolutely think that it beats hands down the current full DPS LoS/stacking gameplay and the current difficulty ramp up by HP pool and raw damage increase.

Advent Leader.1083:

Also, is it just me, or is the war/guard/ele/thief/ranger setup being ‘best DPS’ mirrors what setup Destiny’s Edge have?

They actually lack a Guardian because Logan always runs away :P

Warrior HPS easily beats Guardian one on low healing power enviroment.

Guardian has something like 100 HPS from Resolve (higher with absolute resolution, but it’s your condoir emoval then so you shouldn’t expect a 100% upkeep).
Shelter is 150-160 HPS, Signet is about 210 HPS, traited signet (which seem a pretty bad choice for sPvP btw) is still at 260-270 HPS.

A 400 HPS from Signet of Healing easily beats Healing skill + Resolve from a guardian.

A triple meditation build with 20% CD rduction and Monk Focus tops a 220 HPS if skills are spammed on recharge.
A warrior with just healing signet and adrenal health is fairly equal in healing to a Guardian running shelter and full specced on medis (and resolve up obviously).

Guardian can obviously beat warrior healing on the right enviroment and using a pure defense/support build, that’s one of the reasons why the class is prefered as mid point bunker.
The problem here is that a pretty standard warrior build (Healing Signet + 20 points in defense for Cleansing Ire, with everything else at warriors choice) beats Guardian (which has quite lower base HP because it’s supposed to have better natural sustain) base healing and it’s on par even whith the Guard making a quite high investment on survivality.
In this situation, it’s hard for a Guardian to be really competitive in any role but bunkering, and even then, pidgeonholed to mid bunker where he can benefit from AH and/or provide a pretty ncie team support.
The amount of investment a guardian, low HP tier soldier class, has to make in order to compete with his high HP tier counterpart is pretty weird.

It’s a bug that has been around for a long time, and I wouldn’t call it gamebreaking tbh.

Even with almost every top level team running a Guardian for mid bunker/support, and almost every single guardian running this trait + soldier runes + 2-3 shouts, the condi meta has hold its position.
I would even say that a well known and quite important bug like this hasn’t been solved before because it’s actually healthy for the game.

You’re not alone OP. There’s a difference, however, between stacking and exploiting.

Stacking for SQ is completely legit. As some people already pointed, the boss doesn’t cast AOEs when everybody is in melee, be it against the usual wall or in the middle of the room.
Should SQ cast AOEs on melee too? I don’t think so; that would make the fight extremely melee unfriendly since the boss would get surrounded and protected by her own AOE all the time.
The problem here is that we’re talking about a lvl35 dungeon, so full geared lvl80 players probably have too much damage (so the boss explodes before being a threat) and too many resources for condi cleansing if needed.
Why the lowest level dungeon is one of the most gold ewarding ones would be a really interesting question though.

What I actually find as a exploit, however, is what is usually done with Colossus Rumblus on path 3: stacking on a point that is not reached by the big AOE attack.
I don’t know if Grast is properly working tbh (the method could be somehow justified if not), but it’s obvious that there’s a design flaw here that should be fixed.

In general, I absolutely hate LoS tactic. I’ve used it a lot and I still do (it’s the easiest and fastest way to solve many encounters, which is what really matters when you go just after the loot), but I really think that it negates a lot of the potential fun and challenge that multiple enemy encounters could offer.

DiogoSilva.7089:

Irony aside, Anet’s intention is probably to remove content that people don’t play much and replace it with something (that they plan/ hope to be) much better. So instead of adding new content alongside old, average content, they hope to replace anything less-than-great with something better. This way, the game’s quality is going up, and new content is being made, without splitting the userbase too much, nor without forcing new players to play through content that the community learned to ignore for a reason.

The problem here is that it wasn’t the community who decided which content was worse/better quality wise. Excepting few cases of really awful/great design, the popularity of every single piece of content is predetermined up to a high degree by the rewards ANet set on it.

If we have two dungeons A and B, both offering the same rewards and requiring the same amount of time to complete, but A being clearly harder than B, we can expect most of the community to run B over A. This doesn’t mean that B is better content than A, it means that most players, as expected, are chosing the path with less resistance, so the reward for A should be increased in order to encourage those that can handle the challenge to run it on a regular basis.

Content can’t be rated just with metrics. Otherwise, we might end thinking on CoF1 being the best dungeon, Urmaug Secret being the best JP and Aetherblade Invasion being the best DE.
In order to metrics to be valid and correctly decide which content is low on quality and should be reworked/replaced, there must be a fair correlation between rewards and length/challenge, a correlation that dooesn’t exist currently by any means.

rfdarko.4639:

I love that his reason for removing this path is that it’s one of the “least run” dungeons.

CoF p1 is one of the most run dungeons, but it is absolutely awful. An explorable (read: challenging, end game, intended for coordinated groups) dungeon that takes 10 minutes to complete with 5 necros in blue gear is much worse than a tricky path with some interesting mechanics and puzzle elements but slightly borked final boss. The number of people running is a horrible metric of dungeon quality. It just tells you which are the most farmable/exploitable.

This ^

If “most run” metrics are so meaningful, maybe it’s time to recover some past features, like mountain climbing on CM or door jumping on CoF2.
Even better, some annoying path like SE2 could be reworked to some kind of endless squishy champion spawn, like an instanced and neverending Aetherblade invasion. That would be really popular.

The new path might be better than the old one and become an overall game improvement, that’s something I’m not going to deny until I experience it. There’s however an obvious correlation between popularity and reward that can’t be ignored when replacing content.

Metrics from the latest LS patches would suggest that Scarlet Invasions are much more fun than, for example, SAB, and while still true for a lot of people, it’s not a valid measure when one offers insane amounts of loot and the other just demands quite high time investment and even gold in order to get a skin.

If content is going to be improved, removed or replaced based on metrics, it would be wise to adjust rewards to a fair basis before.