Guild Wars 2

Stack your damage here
Stack your damage over there
Stack your damage here.

Stack your damage here
Stack your damage over there
Stack your damage here.

Stack your damage here
Stack your damage over there
Stack your damage here.

Re-tweaking the stats is the kind of easy, spreadsheet work that ANet are trying with the Ferocity update. We know it’s not going to change much.

The suggestions most rallied behind are improvements to mob behaviour, attack rate (with reduced damage per attack, with occassional insta-downs that still require dodging and further versatility) and buffs to control (essentially by fixing the mess that is Defiant/Unshakable) and I still think these are the best ideas.

Admittedly, ANet has been demonstrating this approach in LS content (Aether pirates with their Boons and control skills, TA with their fast and diverse attack rate) but they’d benefit from doing a pass on all existing dungeon/fractal mobs and giving them similar tweaks.

I remember during beta, those scenes with the 2 characters talking looked much the same, but had signs over them saying that they were unfinished and being worked on.

Then the game shipped, and they remained mostly the same, but the signs were gone.

The change banners need is that they need to be destructible to mobs/enemy players.

Astralporing.1957:

No, as it has been mentioned many times in all the previous topics already, it is called like that because in the design stages of GW1 it was meant to be a PvP game with PvE entrance lobby, revolving around guilds.

Exactly. It was named Guild Wars to capture the intention of the design. Whatever happened later isn’t the point, the name was already out there. Lore came second. It’s why people find the name a touch odd in light of this context.

Astralporing.1957:

That design didn’t survive the first year of the game – it was already weakening at the launch, and was completely dropped after Factions when the focus schifted towards PvE.

Factions – again – indicates guilds/players choosing sides, as indeed they did. Alliance battles came with Factions – even more PvP – and centred around this split. Factions was initially designed to be a polarising dynamic for the PvP meta. Remember that Factions was already being worked on as GW shipped. The design was already laid out.

The game was named to promote its concept of competitive, Guild based, esport aspirational PvP, despite subsequent releases/iterations that is really all there is to it. For all they have diverged from that.

Dusty Moon.4382:

There have been SO MANY THREADS ON THIS – the Name Guild Wars comes from the lore and history, not that there are Guild Wars NOW.

That’s true – but – there’s a bit more. GW had GvG, it’s easy to assume GW2 would have it too, or would have it later.

But the main thing is the name. Before you get back on that lore horse, consider that it’s a name for a franchise that was chosen by ArenaNet. Why? To inspire thoughts in the public about GvG and Guild competition. Lore on one hand, sure, but it isn’t called Guild Wars just for that.

No, it’s only on Warrior (like Fast Hands and FP Sigils) where traits interacting with more than you’d expect are allowed.

tigirius.9014:

GW2 Mystery Patch Notes

What he’s really saying there is: Everybody is looking to Dulfy.net anyway, so let’s just embrace that

I would trade the entirety of the upcoming feature patch for even half of the suggestions in this thread making it into the game.

The truth is Ele is a wonderful class to play but suffers under the weight of a history of questionable PvP/WvW nerfs and an absurd approach to balancing (eg. once in a blue moon) by ANet.

Aside from the mechanics of the skills, the OP is right that they need to be more visual impact to these skills in order to telegraph their usage.

Compare Endure Pain to other invulns:

• Mist form The Ele turns into a white cloud of mist
• Signet of Stone (traited) The Ranger has a large icon of the Signet over his head
• Renewed Focus The Guardian stops attacking and starts channeling
• Elixir S The Engineer becomes tiny
• Distortion Blurred effect over the mesmer
• Endure Pain The icon on the UI, which all of the above have in addition to their obvious effects

hip.8435:

Only a couple days left to see if the party size will be increased to six or eight with the April feature pack.

If you keep creating things to be disappointed in, you won’t be disappointed… No, wait, if you keep creating things to be disappointed in, you will be disappointed… Hm…

hip.8435:

I just don’t see how re-balancing for one more slot is so difficult.

That’s obvious.

hip.8435:

There’s no denying from a pure entertainment standpoint,

There is.

hip.8435:

I highly doubt there would be an outcry to go back to 5 if the limits were increased.

There would be, and some of them even feature in the posts you quote and fail to comprehend in this very thread.

Aza.2105:

Personally speaking, if I had one real request for the class that the devs would implement it would be to increase the baseline survivability and lower the performance of survivability from trait lines. I feel the gap between the untraited guardian and fully spec guardian need to be shortened. If this could happen, I feel it would open up for more diversity. Without investing in traits, guardian’s defense is rather poor.

It’s a fair point in the context of traits. Guardians do have a defensive/survival bias in their heal and utility skills that arguably fills some of that gap. I’ve always felt VoR and VoC had longer cooldowns than they necessarily need. In the context of comparisons with other class Fskills they are, in my mind, rather weak. No doubted diluted by their defensiveness and by affecting a whole party.

Personally, I’m more disappointed that the underperforming aspects of Guardian appear to be getting swept under the rug. Particularly Spirit Weapons. The biggest shake-up comes in Condition damage, most Guardians I know are not keen to exploit that for a number of issues, some of which don’t even reside with the class itself. We’re in a better spot than many, but I think it’s wishful thinking indeed to say we’re in a “good spot” and require mainly QoL changes.

I run these paths almost daily with PUGs.

On certain classes (namely Ele) I enjoy underwater combat, but there are some (Guardian) where it is alot less interesting.

A long time ago, a dev from ANet posted regarding the issue of Norn/charr jumping puzzle camera rage. He said that he was the guy who did all the work and that, prior to launch, he tested all of the JPs with a full-sized Norn and the camera was fine. Then, with just weeks before launch, the camera was changed due to other considerations with the game and the camera problems were caused by this change.

I can’t recall if he said he was going to continue working on this problem, but if he did say or intend that, then it was 12+ months ago.

Thanks user. I’ve tried those builds and my own experiences seem to mirror your figures, so in my eyes they seem to be good indicators of average damage potential.

Yaki.9563:

If those numbers are true why would you go anything other than hammer in PvE? 5% DPS loss for permanent protection? Yes please.

Edit: and extra defensive stats, boon duration, and group support…

Exactly my own thoughts, but they’ve been held for awhile. The perma SoP isn’t just potentially healing/protecting/AHealing, it’s also doing damage the whole time. It’s very easy to setup and very rewarding, if rather boring, to run. It does let you focus more of your attention on your Utilities/Virtues/encounter mechanics alot more than some other build/weapons which can be handy.

Sepdurr gardeehan is here to own newbs and chew gum.

And he’s all outta newbs.

lip smacking chewing noises

Windu The Forbidden One.6045:

Every class has some useless skills.

Yep. Instead of, yaknow, maybe just the most broken professions. That’s the sad part .

It’s kind of compounded on Guard when it’s an entire branch instead of just some from that branch. Again, I know Guardian is not along in that respect either.

I like that it is agreed that Guardian is either close to, or actually the most stable/rounded profession, but it has a whole branch of utilities (Spirit Weapons) that are so weak they’re almost never, ever used.

So you’d be happy with a spirit weapon Staff guardian running condition (Rabid) damage in your sPvP team or FotM party?

Because I know of a couple of classes who excel at ranged condition with pet summons but let’s ignore them for the moment because we’re only interested in Guardians.

Who knows? Internal metrics and testing might make them look better than they are. Maybe Guardians do a couple of other things so well they don’t want to rock the boat? Whatever it is, it’s not good enough.

Konig Des Todes.2086:

@dace: In the cinematic, we see magic traveling to Mordremoth and going into its mouth after the Breachmaker reached its target (the ley lines). So it seems that Mordremoth was fed via Scarlet disrupting the ley lines (remember, she disrupted an interjection – I think what happened was that she prevented the ley lines from going anywhere but the one direction to Mordremoth).

Yeah that’s how I interpreted the cinematic too. We don’t explicitly know that the “light” we see travelling over the land is actually magic. It could be a kind of short circuit, backlash or dissipation of magic and not necessarily a steady flow. There is no line that we can see in the world that is travelling unimpeded to Mordremoth’s apparent domain, so what we see may have been fleeting.

As it enters the dragon’s mouth, it also seems to stop shortly after. Maybe the energy of the ley line is stopped. Or it is contaminated? We just don’t know.

“It seems Scarlet wanted to disrupt the flow of magic. This is what captured the attention of the dragon we heard. Her goal, all along… was the dragon.”

Intentional ambiguity is a pain when it just suffuses what little we do get.

Konig Des Todes.2086:

• Mordremoth just woke up too, and unlike what you said Sundar, we have no indicationt hat Mordremoth (or its champion) is the entity, so we can’t say it scared Scarlet. However, thanks to Scarlet it’s being given a LOT of magic via the ley line, and the Maguuma Jungle holds not only a Bloodstone, but other ancient magics.

Correct me if my correction is incorrect (:D) but don’t we learn at the end of the LS that Scarlet’s ley line drilling disrupted the flow of magic, which caused Mordremoth to stir, not feeding it more as was assumed.

Dirame.8521:

When I look for a build, I look for the best build that THAT class can create, I don’t look for the best build in the game because that just leads to dissapointment.

Theory crafting and testing new waters is interesting and I encourage and applaud that. You may even come up with something viable. But will your build be relevant? is what matters. Right now, and even with anticipated changes, Guardian condition damage is simply not a relevant competitor.

To ignore what everyone else is doing with their professions and focussing on your own isn’t just dedication, it’s willful ignorance. You can play whatever build you want. I’m the last person who will tell people to change build because it is sub-optimal or not as strong as another professions version. What I am saying is, while you may be doing the best that your class can do in some regard, like condi-build, it’s good to know and accept when you are in territory in which your class in that role is a weak performer.

Dirame.8521:

I personally will not say no to more improvements to the condi guardian (such as cover condis like Torment) but I will also not say that it isn’t working right now especially for what the guardian is built for.

You will need to scream from the rooftops to get the changes you need to make this a meta affecting build. I’m not saying Burn Guard can’t be useful, it’s just nowhere near as useful as it has the potential to be.

Dirame.8521:

Where you and I differ is that I don’t take the Guardian and compare it to a class that is literally built to nuke people with condis. The guardian is a single target dps class most of the time and I can tell you for a fact that a condi guardian can down a Necro. The amount of Necros that have underestimated me when I play my condi guardian, it’s not even funny.

It is right to compare. After all, these are the professions you’ll face off against, or compete for places in groups with, or whatever, in the category of role. Anybody can down an anything. I’ve seen naked people win 2v1s and up. I’m sure the worst build in the world has won occasionally.

But if you compare the numbers and one is found severely lacking? Mesmer condi does more damage than Guard. As does Warrior. And Engi. So, you want to be the profession with the awful, easily handled, eggs in one basket condition?

Don’t get me wrong. I want Guardians to have interesting Burn/Fire effects. Flames are a hallmark of the class. It’s the Condition system as it stands that breaks this discussion. I personally want Guardian Burn conditions to do something unique, or stack individually, immune to cleansing, or whatever.

So it’s not the condiGuard that is broken, it’s Conditions. Within that context though, the class simply under performs in the role of condition DPS. Bear in mind the classes designed to do alot of powerful conditions easily suffer under this system too, often underperforming or interfering with their own mechanics.

Aza.2105:

One of the devs during the live feed said the ICD was 15-20secs. To prevent disappointment everyone should assume 20secs. If its 15secs that is great and fits perfectly with the mace.

My perspective is communal defense is a better GM trait for mace than AH. AH works best with hammer and staff, mace doesn’t have the ability to apply boons to allies at a respectable rate, at least for it to be worth while.

Plus, mace already has healing on auto attack that applies to allies as well. So to me communal defense is the better option. Pure of Heart will work well with it. Shattered aegis as well if one is traited for damage. Despite what many people may think about shattered aegis, it can be good under the right circumstances (in pvp).

I agree. I’ve been hoping for a buff to Mace for a long time. Crafted the Juggernaut instead of the Moot because I felt Hammer was superior. With this? Mace is now a contender. And it opens up other build options too like, as you mention, the Aegis orientated traits that are often under utilised.

If only they had been this clever with burning/condition that they’re trying to shoe-horn onto the class (yes, fire is very much a hallmark of the class and I want more interesting ways to burn all the heathens, but this isn’t it!).

Faux.1937:

I dont like any condition build nor do I play one, and I would never WANT a condi guardian, I am the OP of this topic.

Maybe I should have been more specific; that was aimed at ANet.

In order to make a condition Guardian even approach a level where anyone in their right mind would run one requires substantial changes not just to Guardian, but to conditions.

Is that a deal breaker? Heck no. Conditions have been needing overhauled since launch (along with Defiant/Unshakable) and we were promised that they were working on something to address the intrinsic flaws of the system as-is. I think it was as long ago as 15 months that this was mentioned by someone from ANet. The turnaround and rate of change in balance and system tweaking is utterly absurd.

There’s many valid points in this thread but Guardian can’t even think about being a condition contender in the current Conditions format, and the traits/changes being made within the confines of a broken system and without external mechanics of their own undermine the conditions Guardian argument even before there is one.

Aza.2105:

I’d use communal defense over AH if I’m using a mace. Mace really can’t take full advantage of AH like hammer can. Protectors strike and communal defense has more synergy and its more consistent.

Man, ANet missed a trick by not making the ICD 15s so that it’s a perfect match with PS on Mace.

Unless you swap into Mace, pop PS immediately, swap out of Mace ASAP, swap back into Mace ASAP, and pop it again.

Forgetting other block sources for the moment.

Dirame.8521:

With improvement to Condi damage we deal with burning and the other condis we can deal up to 2k Condi damage per second. .

This is pants. My condinecro averages bleeds at almost 50% more than that, a burn just shy of 1k with 80% uptime, a poison of high 200’s and a wealth of other nerf/control conditions, occasional torment for extra condition DPS.

Guardian condition is flat out bad, even with these anticipated changes. I love mould breaking Guardian builds, but something more interesting than burning damage needs to be rolled in to make Guardians focus on burns. Like, make the guardian’s fire individual so it doesn’t get messed up by other fire stacks, and allows for 2 Burn Guards to benefit from the build in the same fight. And/or having that individual burn causing other traited effects, like healing the Guard/allies, or other special effects.

But ANet aren’t thinking along these lines for Guardian because they seem to think that, despite condition/SWeapons being useless for Guardian, that we’re just peachy. And we’re not. In a better place than most, but not so good that we don’t need shaken up a bit.

The obsession with condition guardian is like some kind of running joke that has got way out of hand.

Bash.7291:

I prefer reading this https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/info/updates/Game-Update-Notes-December-14-2012/first#post999247 And just seeing how far off they went with those ideals within a year.

To be fair, the Guardian is where they envisioned it. Powered by boons in melee. Ok, maybe they should add “and if you roll full pve zerk you like dem blinds too amirite” but let’s not get too picky.

Warrior is hysterically off. Engineer is weirdly off, in that the kits are supposed to be subpar DPS? Grenades and bombs say hello. I had no idea they thought that way about Engi. It looked fine with the boons and the medium range, but then he just kitten ed out there at the end. Mesmers struggling with conditions? Since when?

I can’t understand the reasoning behind not doing anything with them. Completely abandoned branch of utilities on a class has to be considered an unintended weakness and a barrier to build diversity. Why the balance people at ANet aren’t extremely worried by these skills lack of usage in Dungeons/WvW/PvP is something I would love to know.

ANet track alot of metrics, according to their devs. I don’t think you’re going to get anything terribly concrete but ANet remind me of Valve in their approach to metric gathering. Metrics are God at Valve. I think the same applies at ANet.

I think it’s why they’re pretty slow to push out some changes. I’m not saying they track too much data, but I think they sometimes struggle to actually use much of it or find solutions that won’t upset other, more satisfactory, figures.

I just read on another thread here about the new GM trait that, when you block, grants a short range AoE aegis to allies. That might elevate Mace up a notch or two. That’s a melee/stack aegis for nearby allies every 15s. Is it enough? Dunno, but it might Mace/x a viable swap set weapon.

This is a nice buff for Mace, actually, and it needs all the help it can get.

Whats the ICD of this trait?

This is GW2, there is no flavour of the month, because changes happen so infrequently. Try flavour of the 6 months+ .

Mace is generally under utilised in dungeons. Normally, I see Guardians using GS or Hammer in PvE dungeons. I prefer the Hammer. Mace can compliment Hammer for full survivability, but that is unnecessary in pretty much everything bar the hardest of fractals (and even then with a rather weird group setup).

It’s kind of a shame, I’ve always had a soft spot for the Mace (and the Moot )

I like him and I am glad ANet changed him. Unforgiving, though easily handled. I’d love if ANet beefed up much of the rest of the AFKontent in dungeons such as the troll this one replaced.

Agreed.

Not much to add, really. It’s a valid point and something that has bugged me on occasion.

ZudetGambeous.9573:

They said they have a fix in the works… of course that was over 500 days ago…

Haha good one…

… oh wait.

This made sense before things got way out of hand. Now it’s just a remnant of an intention long since usurped.

Ision.3207:

insanemaniac.2456:

look a complaint about a ridiculous gamebreaking bug getting fixed

Agreed. +1

Its past time they stopped the FGS against the wall nonsense.

Absolutely. That it wasn’t fixed within days of being brought to ANet’s attention is downright embarressing.

GW2 is a wonderful game that has got out of ANet’s hands in terms of balancing since a long time ago. Somehow, the response from the game’s developer in managing glaring issues that are, or impact, balance is altogether much too slow.

Stated intentions to make (specific and otherwise) changes to the game can and have taken many more months what is required. In the interrim, build diversity is stifled, players may leave because they interpret a slow, or weak, response to perceived balanced problems as incompotence or indifference, even if neither is true, and an negative atmosphere is fostered both between community and developer and within the community (those who benefit or capitalise on perceived imbalances may be viewed with contempt by others).

There is a rigidity in ANet’s approach which is undermining their ability to keep up with the various metas and many aspects of many classes are notoriously under utilised. For example, in the upcoming feature patch, we’re assured Guardian is fine and is receiving slight adjustments at best, mostly QoL orientated. Yet, who runs Spirit Weapons? A whole type of Utilities is ignored by the playerbase, bar occasional Shield of the Avenger. I mostly play PvE and I honestly cannot remember the last time I saw the Sword, Hammer or Bow summoned.

In the above example, I, as a caretaker of my own product, would see this as a distressing balance issue. Since 3 skills that are dismissed from the outset of any build are a source of underlying, unintended weakness for the class – if we base our thinking on the concept that every profession skill available to every profession is a viable contender in at least one viable build.

Classes are slowly being boiled down to their constituent parts, and reinterpreted by the player base, mostly because of these problems. Warriors aren’t weapon masters, they’re masters of self-sustain. Rangers aren’t unparalleled archers, they’re buff providing melee damage dealers. The guiding hand of ANet should have intervened a long time ago – even if half of every classes problems come down to changes made since launch. An impartial update every 3, 6, 12 months is not enough to mitigate unforeseen balance problems, reversions of mistakes and serves to dishearten a generally happy player base.

You say alot which has already been said, and given the lack of response from ANet, needs to continually be re-said.

It’s not even all that difficult to think of alternatives (giving bosses soft damage increases if controlled, a temporary immunity that dispells after a short duration, more frequent lighter attacks so they aren’t utterly hobbled by having 1 skill interrupted, and so on) that would be much more welcome than the current system.

The ridiculous looking blob of 50 players occupying 3m^2 just can’t become any more broken than it already is.

They like to patch in stuff and activate it later too, so there’s probably some of that in there too. Also, the patching process replaces files, so when changes are made to those files, the whole file is replaced.

An excellent thread and I wholeheartedly agree with almost everything in the OP. I sincerely hope ANet take the time to absorb everything MonMalthias has written on these important topics here and actually respond by changing. And like MonMalthias stresses, timeliness is key.

I like some of the changes, but the 30 levels before traits seemed off. My first reaction was that it may be a by-product of changes going into the Chinese version ( it also smells a bit of being able to pay to access it sooner). The timing also has an impact on me thinking this, since EU/US levelling is ghost town.

Whether that’s right or wrong doesn’t change the sentiment of my reaction, which is that this is an obstacle. Lucky I have all the alts I’ll ever need at 80.

Everyone is max level doing endgame or WvW stuff.

Guest on one of the super busy servers for a chance at seeing someone while levelling.

draconx.3102:

They should have tested actually killing the boss, then they would have noticed that he drops AC tokens.

Fission mailed.

Darksteel.8412:

dragonhart…. you need to do some english class than btw…it’s Dragonheart

Not unless he means some kind of dragon deer .

And it’s then not than :P