Guild Wars 2

I’ll try to keep this brief.

In Guild Wars 1, Hard Mode was unlocked for each of the game’s campaigns after you completed the final mission. You had the option of activating it before you went out to quest, and it made the enemies in every one of the game’s zones boost themselves up to max level, with stronger stats, better skills, and better loot. It made it so that literally every zone was worth completing and playing in to at least some extent after finishing a campaign, and IMO greatly improved the longevity and challenge of the game.

Given the complaints about the current level 80 situation pertaining to Orr and the fact that there’s really no other viable place for 80s to go to make money – or at least enough money to cover their traveling costs, given how much of your earnings in this game comes from vendoring blues and greens – re-implementing some sort of hard mode seems like the perfect solution, to spread players out and make sure they keep seeing all of the beautiful places in Tyria, while being properly rewarded.

But how would it work? Obviously, zones aren’t instanced in Guild Wars 2, so upscaling the mobs is not an option. However, downscaling exists, and the way I envision hard mode in GW2 working is essentially an extension of the downscaling system. Basically, once you reach 80, you get a Hard Mode toggle somewhere in the UI. When it’s toggled off, going back to lower leveled zones works as it does now; you get zone-appropriate crafting mats and loot.

Enabling Hard Mode, however, sets you to 4 levels below the normal downscaled level (or more, depending on the region) for every area you visit. You don’t hit as hard, and mobs hit you harder. It’s a challenge. In exchange, you receive level 80 gold, loot, and crafting mats from creatures you kill. The system is completely optional, and ideally relatively easy to toggle on and off (some other considerations might be necessary, like being unable to toggle it in combat, or needing a few kills or set amount of time to “ramp up” to Hard Mode to prevent exploitative play, but these are secondary balance concerns that don’t need to be covered in depth for a simple suggestion post).

Maybe they already have this in mind, and are waiting to implement it until there’s a strong population of 80s and the leveling zone populations are more sparse, but it seems like a badly needed feature that’s well-supported by the game’s existing systems to me.

Personally I think Renewed Focus is pretty weak as an elite compared to the Tomes, so here’s my suggestion to replace it:

Signet of Virtuous Focus
Passive: Increases movement speed, boon duration, and condition duration by 10%.
Active: Recharge your Virtues. You are invulnerable while activating this signet.

The fine materials are what kill me, personally.

I’ve got a bunch of alts that I’m leveling more or less concurrently, and all of them are in duos. We pool mats, I’m doing the gear crafting and my partner is doing the cooking. This would work out well… since we’re both fairly diligent gatherers, I’ve got tons and tons of raw materials to spare; the only problem I ran into so far was gold for jeweling.

But even with two people pooling mats across 5 alts all in the same level range, I don’t get anywhere near enough fine crafting materials. They cost way too much on the Post, and it’s pretty easy to see why crafting isn’t profitable.

Making a green piece of armor or weapon takes 8 fine materials of a given type. I don’t know about you, but I am sure as heck not getting 8 fine crafted mats for every green item drop I stumble across while exploring, and that’s not even bothering to account for the green armor that can be purchased reliably with karma. Nor is it mentioning that the armor I’m crafting takes those 8 mats, plus other raw materials, and doesn’t even come with a rune or sigil, which most green karma/loot drops do, which skews the balance even further away from crafting.

Just make a blue inscription take 1 fine crafting mat, a green take 3, and a rare take 6. Then maybe prices for both fine mats AND basic mats will come under control.

Greatsword will do gobs of damage in PvE on its own, so there’s no real reason not to spec your gear for toughness and/or vitality, especially for dungeons. Bosses don’t have enrage timers, you don’t have any tanks to fall back on, and melee weapons get big passive damage bonuses compared to ranged to compensate for how much more often you’re liable to be hit.

That said, if you’re looking for a defensive secondary set, I’d recommend any one-hander and the Focus. Sword and Mace both have good supportive options with damage and blocks; sword is a bit more aggressive, while mace is a bit more defensive. Scepter is nice and relatively safe for the range. Focus is great for personal survival, since it gives you an instant 3-hit-block shield and a bouncing blind, while Shield is more of a group-defensive weapon. Which makes it a strong choice for parties too, but like you said, more support-oriented.

Yeah, it’d be nice if Shelter was made more generally useful. Especially since I can get nearly twice the healing from SoR and the cooldown difference is 2 seconds while traited.

I’d really like to see shortspears, and mostly would like to see javelins and longbows as martial mid/long range options. All I can say is the Longbow should probably have some sort of raining condition cleanse as the 4 or 5 skill so that it echoes the Bow of Truth, like the other Spirit Weapons echo the ability of the real weapons.

And as an aside, I’d really like it if Flashing Blade and Smite were changed to Symbols, so that our multi-line symbol traits can interact with all of our weapon loadouts, just like how mesmers are given a clone and/or phantasm skill on every two-hand and main-hand weapon. Shouldn’t be that hard to change, either.

Flashing Blade: Teleport to your target and place a Symbol of Zealotry on the ground, blinding foes and granting a boon to allies (Fury?). Make it only pulse once untraited, or twice with the symbol duration trait.

Symbol of Smiting: Places a Symbol on the ground that strikes foes repeatedly and grants Might to allies.

I still love hammer as a PvE weapon, and the leap looks fun; I’m in favor of anything to make guardians more mobile, and I’m glad we had a few boring traits made slightly more interesting.

But even if I was already planning on going 20 into Valor, I don’t think I’d pick up Glacial Heart. Personally, in my thinking, if something has a longer cooldown than 30 seconds, it had better be REALLY good to justify having it instead of something that can be used more often. And a random chance at a chill that is frankly way worse than a Sigil of Ice or Hydromancy is not REALLY good. It’s pretty bad, IMO.

akamon.2769:

i love purging flames too! do you mind sharing your traits build? is the stacking might from traits i assume? i haven’t spent enough time learning my character yet! XDD

and glad to hear more support for the hammer. definitely very versatile and takes getting used to. but do try it out, OP!

Well, I’m planning on getting the might-on-crit major trait from Honor, but it’s mostly from combos. Purging Flames puts down a Fire field. When you hit that with a Blast finisher, it puts 3 stacks of might on everyone around you for a pretty long duration (I think 18 seconds?). So since Mighty Blow and Shield of Wrath are blast finishers, I can hit one, swap weapons, and hit the other and put up 6 stacks of might for me and everybody nearby. Which, IMO, still makes hammer feel really powerful as AoE damage. I usually run with an elementalist who loves her fire attunement too, which means even more Fire fields. Running around with 9-12 stacks of might isn’t terribly uncommon for me without even speccing for it.

This is basically what I’m running right now: http://gw2skills.net/editor/en/?fUEQNAS8dlYgKDHHyLEg4Eh9BCifgjXFgIA

And I’m building towards something more or less like this: http://gw2skills.net/editor/en/?fUEQNAS8dlYgKDHHyLEgIFRWBRa9ggA0fYK4I8vKARA

I crit all the time, and with Justice refreshing on enemy kill, I’m thinking that build should mean lots of AoE blinds, vulnerability, and might during big fights.

My guardian just hit 53, and I doubt I’ve spent more than an hour of that time with the GS.

The Greatsword can pile on crazy damage and big numbers, but I feel like it’s kind of single-mindedly focused on piling a boatload of monsters around you and AoEing them hard. Personally, I feel like the Hammer has more than adequate AoE for DEs and the like just from its 1 and 2 skills, and the other 3 offer a bunch of versatile control options to supplement it.

I also run Purging Flames for the fire field in PvE, along with Sword/Focus for tougher fights, and the really short cooldown on Mighty Blow makes it a combo machine that I would hate to give up in PvE. Just with myself I can Purging Flames > Mighty Blow > Weapon Swap and Shield of Wrath and start a fight with 6 stacks of might, and then there’s all the AoE healing, stealth, and chaos armor with other classes around… I suppose it’s kind of support-y, but I want all those boons for myself just as much as I do for my team mates.