Guild Wars 2

I’m fine with nerfing retaliation if they deem it too strong. They just need to differenciate between retalation by itself, which can still be obtainable easily, and the greatsword symbol, as part of many builds centered around symbol damage and buffs.
I like greatsword, but it is not going anywhere if we have to spam autoattack waiting for cds.

I think the one thing we could ask is the game designer responsible of this class comes on this forum and explains his plan for the guardian. Because nerfing lots of builds and a weapon and leaving people in the dark doesn’t bode well for the relations between players and devs.

@auruan: yes thats one the rare “strange” design decisions I don’t understand. Nowadays UI in games equates with customization, and having fixed slots for weapons feels archaic.

@Sol: that’s the major issue. I don’t want to be forced to take a trait to make a weapon more responsive.
Especially that trait where in the Honor line there are so many good other traits that are more valuable.
Some say that greatsword was not intended/designed to have symbols. Well I say look at the traits: zeal is better symbols + 5% greatsword damage. Honor is 2handed mastery + writs.
So to me, yes greatsword was intended to drop symbols, simply the retaliation might not have been the best choice.
Anyway we need to get lower cds, especially on the symbol. Currently auto-attacks represent a too big proportion of our rotations.

And I add that the leap skill still misses alot. It is more glaring because of the shorter cd.

I tested the greatsword in cursed shore, and I can confirm that now 80% of our attacks are auto-attacks waiting for cooldowns.
This really questions the viability of the greatsword at end game.

this cooldown change on SoW is killing all symbol based builds. Please revert to the previous cooldown, and change the boon granted.

so at the end Trung & Brutality, if you had to choose between 2h mastery and writ of persistence, what would you choose?

They could have easily chosen to replace the retaliation with another boon for the greatsword symbol, and kept the same cd.
That cd increase means: we dont you to use greatsword.

I concur with Ynna, you don’t like retaliation OK. But having useless traits, or nerfed greatsword damage because of longer cd is not acceptable.

Trungalung, thank you for your answer concerning Writ of Persistence.
I was using Writ of Exaltation/Empowering Might/Writ of the Merciful, and you convinced me to dump Writ of the Merciful.
Now my dilemma is between 20% 2handed mastery and writ of persistence, knowing that I use GS/hammer and that GS cd got nerfed. Any advice?

most people are more mad about skill rearranging because they don’t see the monster behind: the -100% nerf of the major mechanic of the greatsword.
It almost looks like that the rearranging of skills and retaliation reasons are used as excuses to that incredible nerf.

@Ketill: This is my major concern: I don’t know why they’re nerfing one of our rare offensive melee weapon, when for example we’re lacking severely in ranged department.

1 ) they didn’t nerf retaliation per se, it is available from other sources
2 ) they 100% nerfed the cd on an important dps skill of the greatsword.
Conclusion: their intended nerf (I dont question their competence) is the greatsword dps.

The issue is that nerf felt like using a hammer to kill a fly: it causes colateral damage to many builds based on symbols.
If truely Anet is not happy with retaliation, why don’t they nerf the numbers, or replace it with another boon? instead they utterly destroy one of the rare offensive weapons at our disposal.
To me this is the first example of bad thinking I witness from Anet, and I’m bit disappointed.

Let’s be honest, the reshuffling of keybinds, albeit annoying, is a manageable nuisance.
The unacceptable part is to nerf the capacity to drop symbols for the greatsword user.
Retaliation too good? nerf its effects, or replace it by another boon. But why nerf the greatsword in itself by doubling cd of its major mechanic, the ability to drop symbol?
We’re like rats being cornered with less and less viable weapon choices for damage, and I DONT like that.

is longer symbol duration trait any good for this build?

I concurr that when fighting slow swinging champions like ettins, you do have enough time to dodge out attack, and then the combat morphes into an action RPG ala Vindictus. Suffice to say it is the most enjoyable combat situation as a guardian.
On the other side of the fun spectrum are fast ranged mobs/people, which is really pain in our kitten
If anything, Anet should buff melee protection versus ranged projectiles, or offer more cripple options, as it is currently too easy to kite as a ranged character.

to be honest, and after beta, and release played most classes to lvl 30+, I can tell you the guardian is the best melee class, blending very good resilience, high sustained damage, and good team support.
The downside is our offensive ranged options TERRIBLY suck.
Now if the game (dungeons, pvp) were more friendly toward melee builds, I wouldn’t care. But currently we only have 2 strategies versus ranged mobs/ppl:
- close in as fast as possible, with the risk of being kited,
- or dodge your way out.

and it’s only spreading 1s of burning, because the passive is only 1s.
and THAT is the main issue of any permeating wrath build.

Brutaly.6257:

i would skip larger symbols and get both 2h mastery and pure of voice.

2h mastery is pretty neat both from a boon perspective and a dps perspective, At least how i move and play with the hammer.

No I meant I planned to go larger symbol/20%mastery/pure of voice in Honor trait line.
would that be ok?

Hmm brutaly I like your 0/5/30/30/5 idea, but then if going 30 points in honor, you can’t honestly passup on Pure of Voice. I personally wouldn’t.
so that asks the question: 2handed mastery vs 20% lower cd on shouts?
- 2handed mastery: not really useful due to poor Hammer 4-5 skills. BUT since i use GS too, skill 3-4-5 are not bad (faster whirl, aoe cone blind+damage, aoe pull+damage) so 20% mastery fits more GS.
- 20% lower cd on shouts: if you take hold the line and retreat, faster swifness sure but still too long cd, and hold the line cd reduction is not big enough.

so i think i will go 0/5/30/30/5 and use larger symbol/20%mastery/pure of voice to get the extra heals from shouts when virtues/focus are on cd.
In dungeon, whenever I need to remove conditions, or simply pulling trash together for the party aoe, I’ll switch to GS, otherwise use Hammer 1,2,3 skills.
what ya think?

to me we lack a proper ranged option like ALL other classes do, and I mean by that one that provides:
- a fast, spammable, decent damage auto-attack
- a 900 sized AOE condition/damage Ground targetted AOE (I would love a burn aoe)
- most if not all skills with a range of 1200.
examining the staff and scepter, they fail at those criterias.

the real question, is why make our ranged option even more terrible? it almost looks like that they didn’t expect some to use staff, and wanted to correct this anomaly.

shout version of this build is tempting, but that means you have to swap larger symbol for 20% reduction on shouts CD. To me I prefer having larger symbol, therefore, I prefer to go for 0/15/30/20/5, and slot 2 shouts + signet of judgement for less damage taken, faster retaliation if needed.
and Mysticon if you go that way, you have all tools at lvl 65, with only radiance tree to flesh out.
My question is: can self healing through altruistic healing crit?

To me these patch notes conveys a bad message: “we dont care about your problems or lack of ranged option. oh you managed to get a useful ranged skill on staff? let’s nerf it.”

Btw Brutaly what do you use for your standard “rotation”?
pop virtues, 3-2-1-5-4, focus/shouts, pop virtues rince repeat?

The crashing happens randomly, but when it happens, it might locks your character from entering the game.
changing hardware configuration might help it few hours/days, but the crashing always comes back.
It seems to me there’s a bug in loading assets from disk into game memory.

several people said that moving their game to HDD and a drive without paging fixed their issue.
Well for me it is not the case.
The only thing I didn’t do is uninstalling the 3D stereoscoping drivers, but to be frank I don’t expect much of it. This is primarly an issue with the game, and seeing the size of the game, it wouldn’t surprise me it’s an occurence of a memory leak.

indeed as more people level up their crafting professions, the crafting mats price decrease.
The economy is generally going in deflation, with some spikes when Anet introduces changes (example of BL chest).

To me it seems that the guardian is either fit for siege engine manning, or part of a little squad of roamers and provide buffs + damage.
no decent offensive ranged option is terrible.

Brutaly is there a way to fiddle with your build so I can slot Hammer and GS together and still make it attractive? I just love those 2 weapons.

Brutaly I realize that the build tools do not include the gear itself, but this has no influence on crit damage: crit damage can only be improved through trait or runes.
So that’s why I’m asking where you’re getting the 75%-100% crit damage from.
sorry for the potential stupid question, and thanks for the answer by advance.
edit: sorry, I checked gw2db and you can get critical damage on gear from various gear. my mistake!

One more question Brutaly:
In your guide, you say that you aim for 75%-105% crit damage. According to the build and gear you posted , I only see you reaching 50% crit damage. Where do you get the rest of crit damage? is 50% crit damage enough anyway?

Brutaly is this build performing good when you don’t have many people around?
I might want to combine it with GS in such case, for the extra killing power.

it’s happening to me every day. It’s getting terribly annoying.
Currently im playing on Harathi Hinterland and I die. I press respawn I crash.
I repair game, it keeps crashing.
Anet fix it !!!!!!!!!!!!!

I want to go with a Permeating Wrath build, that sets on fire your surrounding foes every 4 hits.
Knowing that the burn duration produced by Permeating Wrath is only 1second, is it better to put points into zeal for more damage per hit, or radiance for more condition damage from Permeating Wrath.
My guts say to better go for zeal.

>> Burn them All! <<
- build (copy,paste): gw2skills.net/editor/en/?fUMQNAR7flYgKD33RKEg4ES2DR6AVwKFxz8gpQjyIA;T4AgyyuEcJ5S1liLqmMNJay2krJZTrCOCA
- weapons: greatsword/scepter+torch
- skills: 2 shouts + 1 consecration.
- traits: zeal, honor, virtues.
- gear: runes of the undead/carrion amulet + carrion jewels.
- stats: high power. high vitality. high condition damage.

You hate them? -> BURN THEM ALL!

I have to admit, the guardian is a real melee powerhouse.
I’m using Greatsword/hammer combo, and im treated full zeal/honor lines, improving symbols, 2h damage and shouts.
Alas the ranged options are non-existants, which makes you weak vs ranged mobs, and hard to fight a melee centric boss with aoes knockdowns etc (fighting champion ettins is a never ending dodge dance).
I must say that the elite options terrible suck for an offensive build, and if you’re norn its even worse, as racial elites suck.
I hope Anet gets a deep look at these issues.

I love guardian. I love the melee options, I run with GS/Hammer combo. But the lack of any worthwile ranged damaging skill is NOT understandable.
Why are we the only class that doesn’t have a ranged wide dmging AOE as part of their weapon skills?
Why are we the only class that ranged options sums up in tossing extra-slow balls of excrements that do wet noodle damage?
I love WvW but I dont have the funds nor the envy to spend all my time manning an arrowcart.
So now I’m forced to shelve the class I like for a stupid warrior just because they have worthy ranged option.

I love guardian. I love the melee options, I run with GS/Hammer combo. But the lack of any worthwile ranged damaging skill is NOT understandable.
Why are we the only class that doesn’t have a ranged wide dmging AOE as part of their weapon skills?
Why are we the only class that ranged options sums up in tossing extra-slow balls of excrements that do wet noodle damage?
I love WvW but I dont have the funds nor the envy to spend all my time manning an arrowcart.
So now I’m forced to shelve the class I like for a stupid warrior just because they have worthy ranged option.

Is it me or beside legendary and HOM rewards, there are almost no weapon skin with any glow?
I think the only one so far i found is the Jotun greatsword, but that looked like swinging a giant white popsicle

can you please say what traits you took and how much points per trait line.
the build you link is a bad link, and copying it elsewhere doesnt work.

I concur, they can’t possibly exclude us from keep or attack defense phases in WwW.
Please buff the scepter to do real damage and fast, not skills that hit like wet noodles.
we need in particular a faster single attack and a large damage aoe like ALL other classes have.

If it is 12% is it really worth traiting it?

What’s the bonus provided by that trait? 12% reduction of damage? or 30%?

Shooopa.5632:

A way around that bntapoo is to use scorpion wire. Not only does it pull an enemy to you, it supposedly doesn’t even realize it’s been attacked at first and the other enemies in a group shouldn’t be alerted. If my source is correct.

Yep I do have it for www. I just don’t like the cd tho.
What do you think of my build? will i backstab for crap if not putting alot in power/precision?

the issue is if you’re running dagger/dagger, you have no gap closer but steal.
But opening with steal is wasting the 3 initiative u get from kleptomaniac, if you’re at full initiative.
Another concern is if you’re traiting into trickery for lower steal cd, it does advantage condition based builds at the expense of stealth burst build.
I’m currently trying to create a stealth/backstab/steal hybrid build (http://gw2skills.net/editor/en/?fYEQNAoYVlUmaOXcS7E/JFBnCjiUPFkdsaFoZnCsKfA;TsAg0Cno4ywlgLLXOukctgYQxsAA)
But i’m afraid that beside mug, my backstab and other skills will hit like wet noodles. Any advice on this?

it is actually excellent near the start of my rotation.
Chained with cloak and dagger and backstab, it gets your target to 50% health easily. Then processed with heartseeker.