“Come on, hit me!”
I can’t be the only one who does well 1v1. Blaming everything on our deficiencies is really passing the blame. I certainly agree we need natural access to 25% movement speed, preferably in adept radiance or an elite signet for synergy with dps builds, but there are many options to get close.
As it stands now, there’s a teleport on sword, a leap on greatsword and judge’s intervention. Those all work very well if used at the right time. You can add traveler’s runes for constant mobility or runes of the pack for 50% uptime on swiftness (and fury).
There are solutions, you don’t have to just slowly chase your enemy down getting kited around the point. Though, it does seem I’m pigeonholed into my runes and weapons just to stay close.
We have a couple of options to get close, but not a lot to stay close. And you really have to build around just getting close. From my (admittedly little) experience, the most common scenario is something like this: Judge’s Intervention combined with Greatsword 5 as an opener. You get in a couple of hits and you activate 5 again when they have dodged out of the way. They use a disengagement skill, you leap (and leap frequently has you end up everywhere except on the enemy, but that’s a different issue). They use another disengagement skill, you switch your weapon to Sword, teleport to them. You get Chilled, Crippled or Immobilized and you end up stumbling behind them. This doesn’t require superior skill on part of the opponent. The reaction to an incoming Guardian is always: create some distance.
You need a very specific build to have access to mobility as a Guardian and any class that has a weapon with some sort of movement skill and/or a CC of some sort can outrun us even then.
I should probably create a whole new thread to outline my philosophy on this issue but the basic argument would be this: It’s okay that Guardians aren’t very mobile. It’s okay that they are better at holding a specific point instead of roaming the battlefield. What is not okay is that it requires outstanding play just to stay on our opponents. If we are lacking in terms of mobility, we need ways of countering the mobility of others.
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I’d say it is realistic to compare the Guardian with other professions, since we do play with and against those other professions.
I’ve said it before that if the Guardian’s mobility doesn’t increase (which I don’t necessarily say it should), we could definitely use more ways to dictate the position of our enemies.
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Obtenna, what TrOtskY is saying isn’t that they wants to pigeonhole into one particular role. They’re saying that you need to be an above-average player to play anything except that particular role. Balance need to be had on every level of play and it’s not fun for the average-or-below Guardians to only have one viable build option.
For most players, PvP consists of doing the occasional game with random strangers. If Guardians can only have one viable build on that level (and they really have only one, maybe two viable builds for that level of play) that’s a certain imbalance.
I’ve said this before, but I don’t think that requiring allies nearby to really shine is a great thing. It’s really cool in organized PvP where you can rely on your team, but in the content that most players are playing at they can’t really do that.
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Returning it to Elite status and improving it slightly would probably be best. It has the potential to really feel like an Elite skill. With a slight improvement (to make sure people can easily survive in it) it could really turn the tide of battle.
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Obtena, while you’re mostly right (surviving actual burst damage is pretty much the only thing Guardians should be universally okay at), that was probably overly harsh. Calling people bad is never a way to have a useful discussion.
The reason most people aren’t successful with anything but a few builds? Because most people are just average or scrubs.
Yes and no. Some builds are just widely better than others. And some builds are significantly easier to be successful with. You can’t fault individuals players for that.
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This is completely useless. Criticism is okay, necessary even. But this has nothing constructive in it.
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This post indicates that the devs either made a mistake on their Mesmer design or their Guardian design :p
I think it’s a “grass is always greener” type of situation. When I started doing WvW on my Warrior, I liked that a lot more than my Guardian. This sort of comments aren’t indicative to anything concerning the Guardian’s powerlevel or viability.
I do think that the Guardian allows for slightly more mistakes in beginning players, thanks to the constant trickle of healing.
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Also with Communal Defenses it’s theoretically possible to get massive spikes of damage if used in conjunction with Shattered Aegis, specifically in scenarios like Teq. Since it applies aegis to all allies in the radius, and in a fight like Teq, everyone is going to lose that aegis pretty quick, it could be put to pretty good use there.
I haven’t used the trait or ran that content, but seems like a pretty gimicky way of justifying a trait.
Maybe it’s useful often enough, but a trait that only good on one or two fights isn’t a particularly good trait.
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1) This power is inconsequential. WvW battles aren’t turned because a Guardian survives 4 seconds more than another class. It is rather useful if you’re tackling smaller objectives with a smaller group, guerrilla style, but WvW revolves around large group “battles” (my experience with WvW hasn’t involved battles, but rather “who has the biggest zerg”) in which your individual skills and abilities hardly matter. Everyone is useful in WvW, this isn’t special to Guardians.
That guardian that survives 4 seconds longer blocks with walls, captures enemy in his circle, spams condi cleans on his group and gives them stability so he really makes a difference. Especially the stability is so important.
I won’t disagree that Stability is important, but I’ve never known a Guardian to make a huge difference to a zerg apart from that. Just being the guy that brings Stability isn’t all that interesting either. Maybe it’s just the groups I’ve ran with?
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First things first: It’s my understanding that in organized PvE content, focusing on Support isn’t all that beneficial. The incidental healing you get from Regeneration and other (small) sources isn’t enough to make a difference in the long run. (I’m told, I haven’t run organized PvE in a long while). In WvW zergs, I’m not yet convinced about the usefulness of a big focus on supporting said zerg. In smaller, roaming teams, I think it can have its place.
Okay, with that out of the way:
Off-hand: For PvE, I’d probably pick a Focus. The Shield isn’t useful enough and the Torch isn’t support-y enough. The Focus offers you a Blind (very useful) and another source of Regeneration. As well as the option of extra burst or personal survivability with the 5 skill
For WvW, I’d opt for a Shield. Shield of Absorption becomes a lot more relevant when you’re up against other players. Catching their arrows or knocking them of a bridge can change a fight.
For your secondary weapon, I’d probably go for the Greatsword in PvE and the Hammer in WvW. Both dish out a good amount of damage and offer a good number of options.
I’d also advice a Shout-based build, but mostly because that’s my personal favorite support-build. This build basically builds itself, requiring you to go all the way in Honor for Pure of Voice. Since you’re handing out boons like it’s Christmas, Altruistic Healing is a good option (which also allows you to pick up Mace of Justice and Retributive Armor, which gives you that little extra damage you are looking for).
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Frontline? Join WvW and compare how long you survive in the frontline as all those classes compared to a guardian. Guardians have the best defense in the whole game, no other class can endure so much damage like a guardian. I’ve seen more than enough solo guardians get swarmed by a whole zerg and still survive for very long time compared to the situation they are in. Please don’t whine about the survivability of guardians. Thats like whining about thieves not having enough options to stealth…
While I’m sure that a decently geared level 80 Guardian is a powerhouse in WvW, there are two things I’d like to mention in that regard.
1) This power is inconsequential. WvW battles aren’t turned because a Guardian survives 4 seconds more than another class. It is rather useful if you’re tackling smaller objectives with a smaller group, guerrilla style, but WvW revolves around large group “battles” (my experience with WvW hasn’t involved battles, but rather “who has the biggest zerg”) in which your individual skills and abilities hardly matter. Everyone is useful in WvW, this isn’t special to Guardians.
2) This doesn’t hold for lower-level Guardians. I’ve got a Warrior that I’m leveling completely through WvW. This works, because I have the option of hanging back, providing useful (offensive) buffs and taking down stragglers with my Rifle or Longbow. I know I tried something similar with my Guardian before hitting level 80, and it was very hard to be that useful.
My problem with guardian is we are playing a game with limited character options, basically 10 skills 15 if you reckon weapon swap.
My Spirt Weapons are not viable for anything. Neither are our sigils.
This means that I don’t really have a lot of options when it comes to character design. I get bored with games that have no significant character design options.
Too many useless traits and too many useless skills.
Useless traits is a problem I feel most professions have to deal with. Traits just aren’t as interesting as progression systems in other games.
But yeah, I think this is important to keep in mind. People come into a profession with different expectations. Guardians encompass several archetypes: Monk, Zealous Warrior, Tank-y Paladin, Priest, Medic… And players are going to come into this profession expecting to eventually fill one or more of those roles and I don’t think we can fault them for that.
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That might help as well. Even when I build around an incredibly high mobility (tried a build with Sword/Greatsword, Judge’s Intervention and Signets to incapacitate enemies) I’m kited rather easy. And you give up so much that you’re down rather quickly.
If we get more ways to keep our foes into the fight, even if they don’t want to be, that would be pretty great.
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Zeal— Better to list the traits I actually use: Fiery Wraith, rarely shattered aegis, zealous blade, and scepter power.
Zeal has always been our worst line.
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I actually think the aesthetics of this game are great. It’s one of the things I absolutely can’t complain about. They’re original at times and push in directions that most fantasy don’t really go to, but I like this.
And the Warrior already has an actual shieldbash. I think what we have is thematically okay and fits our role.
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Guardians are by no means underpowered. I always cringe when people complain about what is hands-down the best group support/spearhead in any content because it doesn’t play like another profession.
I don’t want to bring other games into this, but most games allow multiple playstyles per profession. Having only a single viable playstyle is a problem that plagues specializations in other games.
And (since I honestly don’t know) are other professions similarly restricted into a single playstyle?
Some of us have been main guardian from the start and we have builds that haven’t changed in over a year in PVE and PVP.
That doesn’t sound like a good thing, to be honest.
. ArenaNet made a big deal of muddying the water, but the truth is that any game which has mechanically different classes will have incomparables which cannot be so easily balanced and will leave some better at specific things than others.
No-one is complaining about the things we are good at. I think nobody has anything bad to say about our support capabilities. Those are awesome. But we aren’t even forced into that because of a particular meta. It’s literally the only thing we can do properly. (Although I’m enthusiastic about the people who’re trying to make a more bursty Guardian a thing in PvP.)
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Seriously, is this entire forum just endlessly recycling the same questions and discussions forever?
Shield #4 isn’t awesome (it’s cooldown is waaaaaay too long and it’s damage too low), but I think it’s a good way to represent a “shield bash” sort of attack that still fits the Guardian. Also, moving that move to the Focus would really screw the Focus over as a viable option.
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Most of those traits don’t need a revamp. Its not Anets fault that most of the guardian community is hog tied to certain ideas pertaining to the class and refuse to let them go to explore other things.
A month or so after launch, I made a list of all the traits, talking about their usefulness. And most of them are useless, especially if you factor in their opportunity costs. I recently started playing again and the traits haven’t changed in a significant way, so I’ll continue believing that a good part doesn’t have its place.
During that month after launch, people were really creative with their builds, trying out everything. The community isn’t hog tied to certain ideas. These are the builds that were more or less thrust upon us if we want to play in an effective fashion.
But all in all, I hardly love any trait. They’re mostly just static power-increases and there are hardly any traits that change the way you play. They could be a whole lot more interesting, but that isn’t how the game was designed.
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It’s hard not to be bitter when seeing the same things being suggested that I suggest right before/at launch.
But yeah, as Bash has said, this has been suggested plenty of times before and will not happen. Which is a shame, because any change to Merciful Intervention would improve the skill. (Or has someone came up with a good use for it since I stopped playing?)
Mobility (defined as: moving where and when you want) has been an issue since day one and it sorta defines the Guardian right now. Problem is that you can’t quite become the “immovable object” that the Guardian should be (if we can’t be mobile) without sacrificing everything else.
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I just came back after not playing for ages and the same stuff is still being posted.
See, the Guardian is really good at some things.
Team support, we’re awesome at. No question about it. As long as I’ve got a team-mate with me, we’re close to unstoppable. The Guardian you can totally serve as a power multiplier.
Grabbing and holding a point, we’re good at too. With the right build and good use of your skills, you can hold a point for way longer than anyone else. As I said, I haven’t played in ages and I can still knock someone off a point for long enough to cap it.
But here’s the thing:
That’s it. And it’s not enough. I can draw out fights forever, especially in 1v1 or even 2v1 (depending on my opponents) or help my team-mates stay alive, but it won’t kill him. If I invest in living long enough (and with a low starting health pool, you kinda need to) I can’t reach the damage required to take someone down. And to be honest, if you could choose between taking a point without killing its defender, or killing the defender and then taking the point, it’s not hard to figure out what you should prefer.
And if you play in an organized group, this can be mitigated by good communication. A quick: “Hey, I’m at the keep holding off two guys, could use some help,” should sort things out just fine. But not everyone plays at that level of organization and it isn’t fun that you *need*¨that level of organization to play effectively.
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Thanks for your replay. I’m interested in the idea that u say about retaliation. Can explain a bit more on that why its good for a hammer user?
And FYI I’m using GS(sometimes Chang to sword/focus) as back up weapon. This is mainly because I sometimes find difficulty to catch some range players. So GS @3 and sword @2 will be helpful.
Retaliation is just a lot of passive damage that requires minimal effort on your part. When using a defensive build, it’s part of what will eventually let you defeat your opponent, since they don’t have the luxury of not attacking you. It’s not specifically good for a Hammer user, but just for defensive builds in general. You won’t be hitting as hard as the enemy but Retaliation can cause “death of a thousand cuts”.
And those are probably good secondary options. What I’d do in 1v1 is smack them about a bit with the Hammer until you’ve forced them to use their heal. As soon as they’ve done that, switch the your offensive weapon and do as much damage as you can.
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I mostly do just sPvP, so I have little ideas about stats, but an important part of being a good Hammer Guardian is knowing when you shouldn’t use your Hammer. What’s your other weapon set?
Also, with those traits 1v1 will mostly be an endurance fight for you. Just do what you can to stay alive and wear out the opponent.
As for tricks specific to the Hammer: Try to keep Retaliation up (see above) with your finisher. It triggers of both your Symbol and Ring of Warding.
By combining the last three skills (Start with Banish), you can get quite some breathing room against melee opponents, which can be useful for letting your health replenish through passive effects.
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What you could do is ditch the ranged weapon in favor of something more aggressive. As a defensive Guardian, you don’t really need that range, so it’s not really a loss.
I also use the Hammer as a defensive weapon, so I’ve put Sigil of Hydromancy on it, but I’ve put more aggressive Sigils on my other weapons, such as Sigil of Superior Battle.
On a different note: Streamline your traits. Especially Zealot’s Speed, which is doing very little for you.
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A knockback is more useful than Retaliation?
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Yeah, I think it’s allowed to make the underwater skills slightly more powerful. I doesn’t happen that often, and it could compensate for the confusion players experience when moving in a 3D environment.
But I wouldn’t mind if Shield of Absorption lost its heal and got a smaller cooldown. And I actually use the heal.
But don’t underestimate the power of the AoE-knockdown.
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Wow, those are pretty nice. Not everything I dreamed of and mostly Quality of Life and bug fixes, but it should make a lot less annoyed Guardians.
Fixing Pure of Voice makes it an actually viable trait, and I can now feel validated in my PvP build.
The change to Healing Breeze get’s an “A” for effort, but a “C-” for actually fixing something.
Staff changes I’m probably going to need to see in action, but they’re a nice thought. My critique on the Staff not knowing what it wants to be still stands.
And I still don’t care about Spirit Weapons.
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While I actually like the Sword, I understand that it could use a bit of improvement. The biggest problem is probably Zealot’s Defense, which is too narrow and not effective enough.
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Also, you have to keep in mind that weapons in Guild Wars 2 correspond to a playstyle, and the Greatsword offers a popular playstyle. This doesn’t mean the Greatsword is a better weapon than all other weapons, just that what it offers is more popular.
No, this means exactly that the Greatsword is better than other weapons.
Is a hammer useless because it’s not a screwdriver? Is a Holy Priest useless because most people play Shadow? Is a Pyro superior because it’s easier to be successful with? Is an M16 better than an RPG in Metal Gear Solid 4?
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@Setun: What you see as playing to maximize the Scepter’s strengths is just adjusting your playstyle to minimize its flaws. You’re not helping anyone by claiming that the Scepter is a good weapon. It’s passable and you can make it work. That doesn’t mean it’s good.
But by that definition doesn’t that mean that all weapons aren’t good?
I don’t think it does. Most weapons are pretty okay, even if you use them poorly. Playing to their strengths also makes them better, that much is obvious, but they also work fine if you don’t play like that.
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I can’t believe this thread is still going on and that the same discussion is being recycled again and again.
Can’t we all just agree that (A) Our current ranged options are lacking and could stand an improvement (B) Guardians with Longbows would be pretty cool and look nice, but is ultimately not needed © If our current ranged options would get a (small) improvement, we most certainly wouldn’t need another ranged option. (D) When/if they add Crossbows to the game, we think Guardians should get one.
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(edited by Ynna.8769)
On the other hand, it does look pretty cool on quite a couple of other shields. At least, I think it does, but I like simple, straightforward shields.
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Try PvP, Sword and Board works pretty well there.
Also, you have to keep in mind that weapons in Guild Wars 2 correspond to a playstyle, and the Greatsword offers a popular playstyle. This doesn’t mean the Greatsword is a better weapon than all other weapons, just that what it offers is more popular.
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@Setun: What you see as playing to maximize the Scepter’s strengths is just adjusting your playstyle to minimize its flaws. You’re not helping anyone by claiming that the Scepter is a good weapon. It’s passable and you can make it work. That doesn’t mean it’s good.
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I don’t think it’s flawed, but I also won’t be too sad if they change it.
I don’t think every skill that applies buffs need to just grant the buffs without any effort. And Protection is powerful enough to ask that effort. It’s also not too hard to apply it and most of the time I manage to catch at least one ally in the effect.
Making it a shout (or shout-like) is something I don’t agree with. It would be rather counterintuitive to not have it be within the graphical effect.
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Skill 3 is the only skill on the Scepter that doesn’t actually needs changing.
I don’t know that it NEEDs a change, but given the gameplay of the scepter, I’d like to see it changed to give the scepter more options than just hit people from range (sometimes) or switch to scepter to immobilize and… wait to switch back to your other weapon.
I meant that the first and second skill need it more. The third skill actually works well and is worth using. The problems with the Scepter isn’t the third skill. It’s everything else.
Scepter is really just a PvE weapon. It has 1200 range and does damage, what else can you ask for?
Having the weapon actually work at 1200 range? Having an AoE that doesn’t get worse if more people stand in it? Being able to fight other players at range?
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(edited by Ynna.8769)
Skill 3 is the only skill on the Scepter that doesn’t actually needs changing.
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I don’t really see how that addresses our (or anyone’s) issues. It’s a vague answer.
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Are you dodging enough? Because that’s an important factor, especially when fighting multiple opponents.
Apart from that, you could try for a more active defense on your second set, so you can swap from your Hammer when needed. I’d advice Sword or Mace together with a Focus. This way you can use the defenses while your Virtue of Resolve ticks when needed.
I’d also advice you to spend your first trait-points on Justice is Blind, in Radiance, giving you an on-demand Blind.
But most importantly: How are you actually playing?
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Anyone know how stacking Toughness compares to stacking Vitality?
After all, toughness has no effect on conditions.
I’d say it depends on how much condition removal you bring. If you bring a lot, Vitality becomes somewhat less important, but if you only have limited condition removal, Vitality becomes more valuable.
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Then can you please explain to me why after 6 months, they have done nothing about it.
The community has reported the problem countless times both here,the bugs section, on other forums, the wiki, heck it’s even mentioned on the sticky post since day one, yet they have not posted a single time acknowledging the problem or said that they are working on it.It’s one of our most important traits (A grandmaster trait at that), especially for PvP, yet nothing has been done up to this point to fix it. For me this means they are ignoring the problem.
It’s not just this trait. Look at the Necromancer traits. They’re even worse than our traits. They’re just really slow at this. This is why I think it’s so important to communicate with your community.
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Well, be sure to try out a ranged build. Maybe you enjoy it and maybe it’s better than you currently think it is.
As for your current layout, try using a Shield, instead of the Scepter. Using the knockback and than switching to the Scepter should be a pretty good mini-combo.
What kind of content do you run?
What build are you currently using?
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If you can’t heal yourself properly, it doesn’t matter how much you heal others. Not to mention that healing others in this game is mostly inconsequential, unless you can do it with little investment.
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The difference would be that your idea (the cloud) stays after the cast-time is over, whereas my idea (the torus) would pulse during the cast-time, just like Healing Breeze currently works.
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Healing Breeze sounds good in a vacuum, but just doesn’t work in the reality of the game.
The idea of us being able to heal others is of course sound. Since the beginning, Guardians have been marketed towards the players who enjoy support-roles. But as Heinel says, we already have enough (and better) tools for supporting and healing our allies.
And a cone-effect is probably one of the worst ways to heal someone for a profession that spends most of its time meleeing enemies.
I like the “cloud of healing”, and if it’s possible to balance it, I’d like that cloud to heal the Guardian as well as allies.
Other than that there’s the somewhat boring option of having the cone become more of a circle (or torus) around the Guardian.
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@Silver: This might deserve its own thread. For sPvP I see no point in taking Healing Breeze. It heals for too low and the cone is annoying to aim. I like the concept, but the reality of the game makes it rather useless.
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This has been reported countless times,yet the developers ignore it for whatever reason.
Maybe Arenanet thinks that this trait is so overpowered and they ignore it.
It’s extremely unlikely that they’re just ignoring it. It’s possible that it’s not on their priority list, but there’s no way to tell. I’d like a good long blog post from Arenanet about their ideas and philosophy going forward and how they see each profession. I think it’s important for an MMO developer to communicate really well with their playerbase.
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1. The Scepter is your only bet, and a bad bet at that.
2. The Staff is significantly worse and most Guardians don’t seem to even consider it a ranged weapon.
3. I’d go for Crit-chance and Toughness or Vitality, but it depends on the type of content you want to do.
Sorry to be such a downer, but a dedicated ranged Guardian is currently not viable. You can play it and you could potentially enjoy it, but it’s quite a bit worse than any other option you could play.
Edit: If you were going for a Ranged build, make it Scepter + off-hand (probably Focus, but the others work as well) + Hammer. The Hammer will help you to keep range and will be a great asset if you’re forced into melee. Utility-wise there are a couple of options you could go. Wall of Reflection will help you against other ranged opponents and Sanctuary could help there as well. Signets could be useful for keeping the enemy at range. Shouts are also an option, if you want a more backline-support type build.
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(edited by Ynna.8769)
@akamon: I love Shelter as well, but I don’t feel “it’s good when you use the right traits” is a good defense for any skill.
And of course the Signet would get interrupted as well, but you take Shelter for that added security.
Shelter is pretty good in PvP environments, but significantly weaker against PvE opponents, who are a lot more predictable. It could stand to heal a little bit more for its cooldown, because I think the devs overestimated the power of the block.
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@khadorian: I’d put those points in Radiance. If you had 5 more points to spend, I’d suggest Virtues, since the condition removal tied to Virtue of Resolve is pretty useful.
OT: It really bothers me that this trait doesn’t work properly. It’s one of my favorite Grandmaster traits for the Guardian, both from a gameplay perspective and from a design perspective, but because it doesn’t work as it should, it’s generally not worth taking.
The reason I love it so much is because it gives your Shouts and extra dimension. Instead of just using the shouts when you feel like it, it adds a little extra tension, because you could use that shout to remove (a) condition(s).
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Making it targeted has been suggested here before. Now, I don’t know what the devs are thinking, but here’s why I think they don’t want to do it: They don’t want a targeted heal. Period. And making Merciful Intervention targeted (or even ground-targeted) would make it one.
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