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Guardian is in a pretty good spot. I don’t think we’re too powerful or not powerful enough.
Balance is certainly not the biggest issue the Guardian faces.
Let me put it like this: If you’re doing badly (in any aspect of the game), and you think it’s because you’re playing a Guardian, you are mistaken.
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The weapons I’m using are sword/torch and GS, Right-Hand Strength is a good choice. That hadn’t occurred to me. The 5 in Valor were fairly through away points for the vigor but the 15% damage for one-handed would definitely welcomed.
It’s not damage, but crit-chance, but whatever.
I’d sooner drop the 5 points in Valor. Right-Hand Strength synergizes well with Vigorous Precision, which works well with Power of the Virtuous.
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Healing power is really bad.
This is true. It’s very dependent on how well abilities scale with it, which generally isn’t a 1 on 1 conversion. I don’t have exact numbers, but you need loads of +healing in order to make a meaningful difference.
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While I think Guardians are awesome (and prob the best prof in the game right now), its a Paladin.
I don’t see that as a bad thing.
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Just because you have more damage options does not mean you are dealing more damage. Its the same reason why thieves drop so fast. They only focus on offense. If you go sword/torch, where’s your stuns or immobilizes? Where’s your control? What can you do if you can’t reach the enemy?
I don’t want to sound condescending, but you know what abilities the Sword has, right? There’s a way to reach the enemy build in. It also has a blind, which is something I consider either control or support. My stuns and immobilizes are in my Utilities and my other weapon. Do you think the Mace is a bad weapon because it doesn’t provide a gap-closer and a stun?
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What weapons are you using? Because if you’re using one-handed weapons, it might be interesting to drop 5 points out of Valor or Honor for Right-Hand Strength.
Also, is Carrion (that’s Condition Damage, right?) the right option? I’m generally not in favor of condition builds, since we only apply one, and I have a bias in favor of critical chance.
As last Utility, it might be nice to have something that frequently grants boons, so you get more damage out of it.
I’d like to see this in action. I’ve been through so many builds and spent so much gold and karma on gear, I’m afraid to respec traits anymore.
Ah, the joys of PvP :-)
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Now, both Sword and Torch are offensive weapons. In turn, this gives you a purely offensive setup. Look at cleansing flames and compare it to the basic Sword 1. Cleansing Flames deals just about the same damage, over a slightly longer time, with a 15 second cooldown. The only difference with it is that it has a cone based AoE. Personally, this is not enough to sell the sword/torch combo to me. There’s nothing beneficial to come out of it. Its just offense. When I use a sword in pvp, I pair it with a focus. Focus 5 helps eliminate bursts against me, and Focus 4 helps cause a bit of chaos and also mitigate bursts. If I used a torch, I’d have very little defense against a burst warrior or thief.
I don’t see how “does only damage” is always a bad thing. Sometimes that’s all you want to do. Sometimes you just want to burn things and make them die. I’m sure Necromancers or Thieves (or whatever) use weapon combination that do “only” damage.
And you still have the second weapon-set to complement Sword/Torch.
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I don’t know if this is a bug or intended but when you activate your virtue of resolve, your allies still get the passive regeneration while of course you don’t.
The wording of the trait can be read both ways, so I’m not sure if it’s a bug.
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gw2skills.net/editor
This works, at least for PvP items. I don’t play much PvE or WvWvW, so I’m not sure about that.
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If they increase the speed of the scepter orb they would have to decrease the rage of orbs, otherwise it would be op.
Not necessarily. What I think is that they could give the attack some kind of cast-time. If they then increase the speed, the rate of fire (or more precisely the impact) is pretty much the same (and thus roughly the same theoretical damage), but the change to actually hit something is higher.
Alternatively, they could make it into a chain-skill, with ramping damage on the individual sub-skills.
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Maybe I’m spoiled by the constant feedback in WoW (which I don’t think is needed at all). I don’t want the devs to constantly respond to our posts, but I would like occasional feedback to the issues we have.
I feel we, as a community, have a pretty good grasp on the issues this profession has (and I’m obviously biased, because I’m part of the community), but without feedback, we don’t know if the developers see them the same way.
For example, we are pretty bummed with our ranged capabilities, but we have no idea what the developers think about it.
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It’s funny that Guardians are still tremendously OP in PvE while other classes are getting wrecked (Mesmer, Ranger). They seem to touch the heavies the least.
They couldn’t really change much about the Guardian without wrecking it completely.
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Just post the url to your build, people can copy it and still see it. The bad link issue is known.
I’d take Inspired Virtue and Pure of Voice.
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I guess I’m one of the few who love the Scepter as as it is. It is and always has been a mid-range weapon, which is where it shines. It only has 1200 range because in closed beta people cried and cried that melee wasn’t viable in WvW and Guardians couldn’t get kills in sieges without a longer range weapon. So they tacked on 300.
And people in beta were absolutely correct.
I’ve said this again and again: if Arenanet wants the Scepter to be used at mid-range, they should make it’s maximum range mid-range. If a weapon has 1200 range, I expect it to be useful at that range.
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For, mace, shield and shouts I’d work with the trait lines of 0/0/30/30/10, but of course it’s all very personal-opinion based.
Not a bad build. I’ve used 0/5/30/30/5 a bit, because I don’t feel the last 5 points in Virtues are all that meaningful.
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I’m not sure if it’s such an important change. The speed was notably slow, but it was not the only thing holding the Staff back as a viable ranged weapon.
The Staff is still a mish-mash of abilities that are interesting on their own, but have no overlapping theme.
And Orb of Light still seems to have troubles with the Z-axis.
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There are plenty of ways to go. With a Staff an Altruistic Healing build might be best. Just go 30 points in Valor for Altruistic Healing. Then you can do whatever you want, but a good way to go is to take at least 10 points in Honor, so you can take Shouts as Utilities.
But the very best would be to just make a build, try it out and then come back to the forums and ask for feedback.
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This was… disappointing, to say the least.
- The Shield of Judgment change is weird. Shield of Judgment already had a high-cooldown that prevented it from being overly useful. Three seconds of Protection aren’t worth the 30 second (or 24 traited). I’m not saying this will make the Shield obsolete (the knockback on the fifth skill is still worth it), but it is a pretty big blow.
- Speeding up Orb of Light is a good change, but ultimately does little to solve the overarching problem the Guardian has with fighting at range.
- The “nerf” of skills (like Empower) only affecting five persons is something I’m kinda okay with. The viability of a skill/professions shouldn’t rely on the number of allies near. Having other people around should make you stronger, but not massively so.
- Did anyone test out Merciful Intervention? The way it reads now is that it no longer teleports, just creates the healing effect around the Guardian, which is the laziest “fix” ever.
I’m not generally so negative after a patch, but there is very little to be excited about.
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May I say, that I looked at the bunker build and that has to be one of the most boring playstyles I’ve ever looked at. You have become a sponge.
I find them to be quite fun, actually. But I’m one of those weirdos who doesn’t particularly enjoy killing in games. They’re not as easy to play as everyone seems to think and I enjoy the work I have to put into surviving for an adequate amount of time. And keeping enemies of a point for over a minute is quite enjoyable, to me.
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It’d be nice if they removed scepter from guardian weapons, and replaced it with a longbow.
Or, you know, just make the Scepter into a decent weapon.
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Sylvari, because Arthurian legend. And since race is almost a purely cosmetic choice really don’t understand how anyone can be unhappy at the race they chose. Its not like you don’t know what it looks like before you start!
In my case: Personal Story.
Every time my character opens his mouth, I want to strangle him.
He is so dumb.Does he say stuff like “eat my dust!”? XD
The soundbites with boons are pretty okay. I mostly hear “Armored up!”, and “Come on, hit me!” which are better than “Feedback-loop initiated.”
It’s just his attitude. He’s trying to hard to be a good boy and protect queen and country, despite the fact that the queen has a million guards.
Questgivers (in the personal story) are like: “Hey, we need someone who can do this outrageously difficult and life-threatening thing.” And then my characters goes: “Oh, no problem. I’ll do it.”
It’s like he wants to die a senseless death. At least ask what the reward will be.
“Come on, hit me!”
Sylvari, because Arthurian legend. And since race is almost a purely cosmetic choice really don’t understand how anyone can be unhappy at the race they chose. Its not like you don’t know what it looks like before you start!
In my case: Personal Story.
Every time my character opens his mouth, I want to strangle him.
He is so dumb.
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I don’t think the Guardian is a completely new archetype. It’s basically an extension of the Paladin-archetype, but a-religious.
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I don’t sPvP, so exactly what skills or traits are in danger of being nerfed with the “bunker build”?
If they don’t want to completely destroy those builds (and thus the Guardian’s presence in PvP) they can’t really change all that much.
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I’m not one for speculation on this area.
I expect some bug-fixes and maybe an ability or two that gets minor tweaks. And whatever you personally think, don’t expect too much, so you won’t get disappointed. I don’t want to spend my weekend telling people they should calm down.
I’m especially interested in tweaks and changes (however little), because they give a glimpse on what Arenanet thinks about our profession and what direction they want to take it.
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I think the priority system is the best (and probably easiest) way to fix the skill.
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Drarnor, I use Staff as well and totally agree, the cast time makes that an almost a junk skill.
Arenanet has said during Beta that we can’t have a Line of Warding that is instant cast, cast on the move and ground-targetable. Only two out of those three together.
You CANNOT dodge out of the circle. I tried it, it never succeeded. It’s all about Stability and maybe something else, but I’ve no idea what exactly.
It’s not just Stability. You can dodge out (or in). Not always, but sometimes it works.
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They won’t implement a skill that has you targeting a friendly player because it resembles classical healing too much.
Best suggestion about it was making it ground-targeted, but that makes it also a mobility skill and I’m not sure if they want that.
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You guys are all far too pro and advanced. His wife is leveling all this theory craft on utilities doesn’t help. It’s really easy to level.
How is “don’t use Merciful Intervention” too complicated?
We offered advice. The person who asked found it useful.
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I still maintain it is a very good skill.
It might be a little easy to avoid, which should probably be tweaked, but it should most definitely have counters. Teleports and Stability make the most sense. Dodging our wards doesn’t, really.
Judge’s Intervention isn’t a root, just a teleport and burn. You have to stand still and channel to create it, so most players will see you doing this and dodge roll out. If you want a guaranteed way to hit them with it, bring along Signet of Wrath or something and Immobilize them.
I’m not sure you completely understand it. You can cast Judge’s Intervention while casting Ring of Warding, so you teleport to the enemy and they instantly have the wall around them.
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Well, the last few weeks I’ve got her completely using the mouse for movement instead of using the direction keys, but she still clicks on her spells and doesn’t move in combat, she got a long way to go. I got a 12 button razer naga mouse but she says she can’t use it because her nails are too long
Yeah, clicking your skills isn’t really a good idea in this game. Did you teach her how to play? Because if you did, why did you even explain the idea of clicking your spells?
Anyway, a multi-button mouse isn’t really needed. I play perfectly fine with my regular old three-button mouse.
She is finding the Greatsword to be a great weapon luckily. I was thinking about giving her a Scepter for her second weapon so she can shoot bosses from afar but she also likes Mace and Shield so I don’t know.
Having a Scepter in your inventory is always a good idea, but don’t force it on her. Mace/Shield is a good combination when you want to play it defensively and is a good foil to the more aggressive Greatsword.
As for utilities, I wanted to just stick her with signets because they are easier, the one that reduces damage passive seems good for her too, but she wanted a spirit sword because ’it’s so pretty’ and it does help with some damage so I allowed it haha.
Eventually I think I’ll stick her with Sanctuary and that Intervention heal because seriously, she just gets so demoralized when she dies, the more heals she has the better as far as I am concerned.
I’m not a big fan of Signets (but they are pretty good). For more survivability Shouts might be a better avenue, instead of Signets. Signets are actually pretty hard to use effectively (because you constantly have to consider if it’s worth activating them). Shouts are hard to use wrongly.
Is is just the Spirit Sword she likes? Because if she also thinks the Spirit Hammer is worth using, that might be a bit better, defensively, with an extra stun.
Don’t use Merciful Intervention. It’s probably the most useless of our utilities. If healing is the concern, just use “Hold the Line!”. Better would probably be learning how to make do with just your heal (Shelter or Signet of Resolve) and dodging, blocking and blinding.
Sanctuary is a good skill, but the long cooldown makes it hard to rely on it.
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THAT is the real sacrifice – have no fun and doing the same boring-as-Dunst thing for hours at a time so you can meet one VERY limited goal!
I quite enjoy defending capture points, probably for the same reason as I like healing. I like helping out my team, but I don’t really like the actual fighting people. I also love it when I can knock back people for 2 minutes before they can actually stay on the point I’m defending. So, yeah, I like being a bunker, but for the good of the game, I’d argue that they’re too important right now. And you can’t just nerf the professions that play bunker-builds, because that wouldn’t solve the fundamental issue.
Do I get a graphic when I have 17 stacks of Thief bleeds that they can apply in 5 seconds?
How are you people still dying to Retaliation?
I sacrifice a LOT for retaliation , it takes up a slot and has a cooldown.
How are you still dying to Retaliation?
I’ve argued (since beta) that buffs and boons are generally too hard to see (with some exceptions, like Poison or Aegis). But even so, Retaliation is different from Bleeding.
And it’s not so much that people are dying to Retaliation (the damage is indeed pretty low), but that defensive/bunker builds are able to have sustainable damage output because of it.
And I must say I don’t fully understand your post. First you are saying that Retaliation is very weak, and then you say you go out of your way to gear/build for it. Why would you do that if the boon was truly weak.
As a Guardian, I will build for Retaliation until we get other viable options. /agree with Guardian Retaliation supporters.
As I said above, bunkers would be equally viable without Retaliation. And I don’t think Guardians shouldn’t have it, but I do think it shouldn’t be such a big part of the profession (and when we get less reliant on Retaliation, we should get other changes to compensate for that).
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I don’t generally make builds for others, but I’ll see what I can do.
- First of all, take 15 points in Radiance. This adds a blind to Virtue of Justice and refreshes it after killing an enemy. This is a pretty good trait if you don’t like dodging.
- The rest of the points should go to either Honor or Valor, depending on your playstyle and preferred utilities.
- Weapons: I’d take Sword/Focus in one slot, giving you quite some defense (two blinds and three blocks), while still being able to attack quickly. The other could be Greatsword, Hammer or something with a Mace.
- Utilities: Can’t really go wrong here. Maybe make sure to pick at least one that removes conditions.
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First of all: Don’t use the “Question-format” if you’re not asking a question which has a single, factual question.
@Khenzy: I don’t think Pure of Voice or Altruistic Healing builds are actually overpowered (small aspects of them, such as using Retaliation to kill people, are). It’s just that the meta makes them really strong, which makes other (more offensive) builds harder to pull off (especially since those builds have a tendency to die at burst).
TLDR: It’s not really a problem with this profession.
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I do hope there aren’t anymore downward adjustments. Too many of those lately and we haven’t see much in return.
There has only one change since Beta that I disagreed with. And that one should have just been handled differently. All the other changes (“nerfs”) were completely justified.
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Traits that offer flat increases are stupid. They’ll never turn a bad weapon into a good one or improve a good weapon in a meaningful manner. If Greatswords are meant to do 5% more damage, just give them that damage baseline.
Traits are fun, but only if they change the way you play, or improve your playstyle in an interesting way.
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The class is already destroyed.
Reroll like half the guard population has done.
And I’m certain you have actual numbers and metrics.
You shouldn’t make such statements if you can’t back them up.
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You can’t and it’s amazingly annoying.
But as Mithir said, there’s a patch of water in the Mists where you can go to adjust your underwater skills.
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@thisolderhead:
1. I agree. The responsibility for the Retaliation damage ultimately comes from the opponent, and they should be clearly informed about it.
2. If you’re talking about bunker-builds (I’m not sure), but with them Retaliation is mostly low-risk, high-reward. They don’t have to sacrifice anything for it.
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Retaliation is problematic, regardless of what you say.
- It should do damage equal to the damage received. This isn’t necessarily a buff or a nerf, but it would make much more sense and give enemies (in PvP) more responsibility in regards to the damage they receive from it.
- It should have a clear graphical manifestation. People should know when this boon is up.
- For a Bunker Guardian, using Retaliation is dumb. It doesn’t take special effort, so it’s low risk, high reward.
- As for PvE, I understand that keeping Retaliation up at all times takes some effort and is very effective. I just don’t think such a build should be extremely viable.
- Retaliation should be more reactionary instead of pro-active, like it is now. As it is now, you’re just keeping Retaliation up, because it does the same damage no matter how you use it. It should be something you (mostly) keep for big incoming hits, so you can punish enemies for those.
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The reason everyone’s expecting bunkers to get nerfed is because the meta (in PvP) is dominated with them and Retaliation has them doing damage while being able to focus mostly on defense.
Offensive Guardians aren’t as bad in PvP as everyone seems to think, but they’re not (as Eveningstar describes it) meta-good. Playing offensively is less worthwhile than going defense.
I don’t actually think this profession needs nerfs (Retaliation in general could do with a rework), but tweaking our skills won’t necessarily hurt us.
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Good to know, thanks for the testing
I’m not much of a PvP player, that’s why I didn’t test it in sPvP, my shortcomings in PvP wouldn’t do any build justice. and the build isn’t intended for PvP either.
You’re welcome.
I play quite a bit of PvP (not really especially skilled, but good enough) and I really like testing out new builds and it’s the fastest way to field-test builds.
I think it works in dungeons, but you’re health is rather low, so you do need to be careful. If you test it in a dungeon, let us know if Altruistic Healing is keeping you alive.
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While I agree that the Staff is in need of a revamp, I’m not sure if I like your suggestions.
The Staff currently has little direction (for example, the Greatsword is a combo-finisher weapon). I think it should become a rather dedicated support weapon, because it’s half-way there anyway.
But anyway, I don’’t think Symbol of Swiftness really needs changing, especially not if the change makes it completely different from other symbols. And a Symbol that gives both Swiftness and Stability is a bit overpowered and makes “Retreat!” rather obsolete.
Empower is pretty okay. Yes, it takes you out of the fight, but that’s kinda the point. You sacrifice your own combat up-time to help your group.
Edit: I think the Scepter also needs changes, especially to the first two abilities.
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(edited by Ynna.8769)
I did some short testing of the build in sPvP. (With Shield instead of Torch and with 2 shouts and Contemplation of Purity).
It actually works remarkably well, but it did have problems with enemies who did burst or where very, very defensive. Against burst, you just die too quickly, and all your boons (and healing) have little effect. Against defense builds, you just can’t be fast enough.
Now, I’m pretty sure that good players in PvE can certainly make the build work. I had around 60% crit, and I was able to have a constant supply of Vigor and Might.
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I think it might work (and now I want to test it out in sPvP, which I’ll do later today). You’re boon-applications are a bit random, but theoretically, you might be fine. What I would change is going all-out on Shouts, since you’re dabbling in Honor anyway, which gives you relatively short-cooldown boons and maybe Contemplation of Purity as on-demand condition removal.
The problem with your build is that it could greatly benefit from Right-Hand Strength, for which you don’t have enough trait-points or from Inspired Virtue (more boons), but that would require taking points from Radiance and thus losing valuable crit.
I’m also thinking about using the Shield with the Sword, so you have an extra boon there.
I’m definitely going to try it out, but I think you’re not powerful enough, so you won’t be able to bring people down before they kill you.
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I’m pretty sure the crit chance from sigils of accuracy still doesn’t show up in the hero menu (but it works), you might want to check if the same thing applies to right hand strength (or w/e it’s called) by looking at crit chance before and after selecting it.
I’m pretty certain Right-Hand Strength does not show in the hero-panel.
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Retaliation is basically the core of [the Guardian. Or they should just separate PvE/PvP and leave Retaliation as it is for PvE and change it in PvP.
Well, I think it’s problematic that we need to rely on Retaliation that much. It shouldn’t be core to the Guardian. Also, a bunker Guardian can do a disproportional amount of damage through Retaliation, which is a relatively passive way of doing damage.
I also think the way Retaliation works is wrong as well, but I’d rather not bring this thread more off-topic.
More on-topic: I don’t think I’ll ever “reroll”, since the Guardian fits my playstyle the best. I’m also not the sort of person who rerolls because his favored profession got a few small changes. I’m also not convinced that the Guardian is “nerfed” in such a way as to be unplayable or too weak.
That being said, I recently started leveling a Necromancer and it’s been fun, despite them having worse traits than we have. (And I don’t know if it’ll keep my interest, since I hardly care about half their utilities.)
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If Arenanet mess up Retaliation I think I will drop my Guardian reroll and go Spirits Ranger.
If Guardians would lose a bit of their reliance on Retaliation (which I think would be a good thing), they kinda deserve more damage in other areas.
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The only ones I do feel are semi absolute is a choice between Monk’s Focus or Altruistic healing. Unless you plan to go full glass cannon, both these 2 master traits grant so much survivability in both PvP and PvE that it is very difficult to pass them up.
I really think Pure of Voice is really underrated in PvP.
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