Guild Wars 2

Mesmer was my first main but they don’t do enough damage to fit in with today’s pve zerker meta. My guardian does more damage, has better active defenses, and has more reliable reflects. I see no reason to ever group with a mesmer.

Being good at the combat in this game and being able to avoid damage spikes via active defenses should reward you with being able to do more damage. I remember on release when zerkers were kicked from dungeon groups because everyone thought pve was so hard. It wasn’t, people just hadn’t learnt it yet. It’s working as intended imo.

can someone give me a tldr? I haven’t done the personal story past the claw island part and was actually looking forward to finishing it one day. Did they remove it?

ugh. I just noticed I can’t have ventari (toughness/healing/vitality) stats on mawdrey or ANY back piece for that matter kind of annoying.

Thanks, I have the pet seedling so I guess I did some of it before but not all the way (I don’t play often). Will it be much more expensive to keep going?

I’ve been looking on the wiki but the crafting chain is sooo confusing. Is it worth trying to build or what? I currently have a non infused ascended prototype fractal capacitor with zerker stats but I was thinking of trying different stat combos for wvw.

rapthorne.7345:

No level cap/gear tier increase: We were very specifically told that no new tier of gear or level cap was coming so people’s work on characters wouldn’t be invalidated

That means all my ascended gear for my guardian should transfer pretty easily to the revenant ?

I will rephrase. If this is still offensive please contact me and help me write it in an acceptable way? Thanks.

To answer your question – if you want the devs to notice, post here. Be polite, be concise, be straight to the point. Above all be constructive.

I have noticed many of the people who had great feedback to give struggled to get their thoughts across while adhering to the pointers given by mods in this thread. Gradually those people have migrated to other forums. Thus we’re left with a perceived general consensus on the forums which might not reflect the wider player-base. That is not to say the feedback here is lower quality, just that the users of this forum likely reflect a specific section of the player base. So I’d take that into consideration when pondering what the devs do with this feedback.

Don’t listen to the vitriol. A healing/support guardian is perfectly viable and a useful addition to a fractal 49 run.
The usefulness diminishes the more pro your group are. If they are great players they won’t need your heals, but if they are zerkers with zero skill mindlessly following the forum hype then you will be a great addition to the group.

Pugs always go smoother as ventari, organised always goes smoother as zerker in my experience.

Regular dungeons however go far quicker as zerker.

Anyway I recommend 0.0.4.6.4 with strength of numbers, Mace of justice, superior aria, merciful symbols, battle presence, consecration mastery and absolute resolution. I use ventari gear with cleric trinkets. Mace /Shields and staff. Water runes, water sigil and life sigil. Utilities are swappable but I recommend hold the line, the ease of applying that many massive regeneration ticks without positioning concerns is great with this much healing power.

If you drop double symbols (weapon swap) and pop protection there’s pretty much nothing that can harm you, I’ve stood and rezzed all 4 dead pugs during dozens of fotm49 bosses without breaking a sweat.

Huge changes to the commander system.

Aka 3 new colours.

Don’t get me wrong I like a lot of the stuff the patch is doc. Just stop treating me like an idiot with the hype machine. It’ll just backfire.

I already quit one game I loved because of pet battles.. Don’t make me do it again.

Where does it say today is deadline day?

I’d like to see the boss fights of existing dungeons improved with mechanics such as we saw in the latest living scenario, and some of the fights such as the shadow dragon added to fractals.

Once that is done, add things similar to the living story episode achievements. Eg : defeat the molten core duo boss without being hit by a fireball for a bonus loot box. Some of these bonus loot criteria should encourage tactics other than zerker dps.

Do I still have to trait for 20% utility Cooldown, 20% spirit weapon special attack Cooldown and 50% duration increase? And all in silly trait lines?

Black Box.9312:

All of the other changes are pointless and there will still be nobody using spirit weapons, glacial heart, or the tomes..

Agree. Nothing here makes me want to change any of my builds. Most of it is irrelevant and could have been skipped out.

Lots of hate on pve support guards.
Totally agree that in a skilled team you may as well go full zerker but I’ve carried multiple pug wipe fests in fotm49 in ventari gear simply because my team will not die while I want to keep them up.
I used to be a huge zerker fan but there are an awful lot of lowly skilled ones just dying over and over in high fractals who really should just admit they’re not skilled enough for it.

Anyway as mentioned above the effect of shield 4 is great but the area of effect is poorly thought out. Shield 5 is clunky and should be an instant, mobile bubble based on the guardian lasting significantly longer than the current duration.

I would love a reason to go back to zones I only ran through once.

Until the ascended back piece scavenger hunt I didn’t even know about the underground volcano asura lab.. And the discovery of it gave me the feeling of exploration I felt at launch.

I would like to see a specific different zone ‘boosted’ every day in the same way dry top is at the moment, and all events and hearts give you bonus loot. Make the rewards good and players will revisit zones.

Let’s not forget that the dragon shadow knew there was a meeting… knew when to show up..
Did Taimi leak the info to Mordremoth somehow through the ley-lines in retaliation, hoping Phlunk would get killed? I would have been fine with that!

I’ve got a bunch of friends in the order of whispers who owe me a few favours.

I thought it was amazing. Cleared it first time on my zerker guardian, only died once but once you got into the rhythm of things it was easy enough. Looking forward to challenge mode!

Just though I’d throw that out there. In each of the living story episodes I’ve noticed vast improvements to the boss fight mechanics.

Could these ideas be used in Dungeons going forward?
How about hitting achievement criteria leading to bonus loot chests? (even if you already got the achievement) – some of these achievements are not simply zerker stack and spank but required slow paced control, so that would help diversity a little when people do achievement runs. Some of these fights are so good that they could easily be a fractal or dungeon fight, and it’s a shame to see they may only be completed a few times for achievements and then forgotten about.

Seriously. My character would be having none of his attitude.

Can anyone explain why this needs a nerf to somebody who doesn’t play much pvp?
The only eles I see are full zerker pve ones
Thanks

Worth it? Do you have a specific gear set for it?

ColinJohanson.2394:

If your feedback is something like what I’ve proposed isn’t useful and you’d prefer more discussion initiatives, that’d be totally valid in this thread as well.

Thanks Colin. I get that the CDI would be the discussion pool and these Dev stickies at the top of major threads would be a summation of a subject, it’s just that what you’ve proposed has the potential to not be very useful, if the discussion/CDI threads simply turn into players discussing or making suggestions that go ignored.

Obviously not all of our ideas are great, but if discussion reaches a common consensus but the developer updates/key discussion points are heading in the opposite direction, it would be useful to understand the thought process behind it – whether that communication is done in the CDI or the summation sticky you’ve proposed I don’t know, but what I think you would want to avoid is updating the summation sticky with info that will come as a shock to the players and possibly be different to what they were telling you they wanted.

I think overall a summary somewhere is useful and will avoid newcomers to the discussion having to trawl through pages and pages of info to find the state of things, but it needs to accurately reflect the discussion on the subject rather than potentially be something we don’t like being forced upon us.

Colin, apologies if this comes off aggressive.

The problem I’ve had in the past is that while there would be topics asking for feedback on various subjects, there would be no response from developers and certainly no actual implementation of the good ideas or backing down from the bad ones.

If you’re going to ask for our thoughts and input on topics as you have suggested, we really need to know a) that you are listening and b) the reasons behind the outcome that was chosen.

Take for example the class balance threads several months ago. There were only 2 posts from 1 dev after hundreds of posts in the guardian forums. Here are the main changes that were discussed, the discussion points, and the outcomes:

Zeal V – Shattered Aegis. Damage instead of Burning.
We said the damage needed to be decent or we would have preferred the burning. We were promised numbers before it went live. It went live without the numbers being given to us. The numbers were underwhelming. Very few people now use this trait and we would have preferred you had not touched it in the balance pass.
Zeal XII – Kindled Zeal. Increased conversion from 10% to 13% power->condition damage
We told you this was pointless and made numerous suggestions on how to make condition guardian viable. It still went in.
Radiance V – Searing Flames. Reduced cooldown from 20s to 10s.
We told you the problem was not just the cooldown but the boon stripping priority (might stripped first!?) and ease of boon reapplication. We offered alternatives. It still went in.
Radiance X – Powerful blades. Increased damage from 5% to 10%.
We told you sword didn’t need a dps buff, in fact it was already one of our top dps options. We asked for some kind of functional or interesting change rather than a passive increase. Jon agreed and asked for suggestions. It still went in as a passive 10%.
Symbol of Swiftness: This skill now applies 4 seconds of swiftness per pulse, rather than 8 seconds if you have no swiftness and 1 second if you have swiftness.
Everyone hated this. It still went in.

Fair enough for whatever reason you didn’t like our ideas. But why not tell us why you didn’t like our ideas, and why you preferred the original ones?

Too many times have these ‘CDIs’ or developer discussion threads turned into us talking to a brick wall. In fact, the majority of the people who would probably have incredible input to give you have either been banned from the forums or simply don’t bother anymore. If you want us to put the effort in and engage in the sorts of discussions you’re proposing, you need to show us you can acknowledge public sentiment and comment on it, even if you don’t bend to it.

I predict this thread will be removed.
But I think you have some valid points.
We should probably give anet time to show us whether they really will improve communication or not.

Those of you who have noticed I don’t play PvP are spot on. I play other games to get my PvP fix for various reasons (:
Those of you who offered perspective from a PvPers point of view are awesome.
Thanks!

Virtues
Minors
Inspired Virtue-Amazing. Everyone should have this minor.
Virtue of Retribution-Negligible really, but kinda useful in wvw.
Power of the Virtuous-Decent if you’re this deep into virtue and a dpser.
Majors
Unscathed Contender-I feel this is in a good place. High risk high reward, and good for activated burst.
Vengeful-Not great.
Consecrated Ground-Fantastic pick. Just wish Sanctuary would be better.
Retaliatory subconscious-Really? Other classes get things like shadowstep away on cc, mirror the cc back to the enemy, create a static field around yourself… we get.. 3 seconds of retal? Really?
Improved spirit weapon duration-Enough with the small army of spirit weapon traits!
Elite focus-I don’t know if many people use our tomes any more. Removing our utilities and weapon skills is a bit rubbish. Most of the time I see them used it’s for a quick zealot’s fervor (quickness) or 100% heal and then cancelled. I think tomes need a rework. There are also bugs such as removing all protection gained from ToC’s #3 skill when you finish Tome-ing.
Absolute Resolution-Solid choice.
Indomitable Courage-Solid choice.
Supreme justice-Nobody cares about burning.
Permeating wrath-Nobody cares about burning.
Shielded mind-Decent I guess but highly situational and a long cooldown. Not great for a GM trait.
Purity of Body-Waste of programming code. Tiny bonus, doesn’t even stack with vigor. Grandmaster trait? Joke.

Conclusion
I want to like Virtue. Too many of the high end traits are situational or useless, but when it’s useful.. it’s really really useful. I think our virtues need a lower cooldown overall. Elite Focus has potential depending on the Tome rework. Certain traits simply need redone such as the Virtue of Justice traits and Purity of Body.

Utilities
Meditations-All except smite condition have a cooldown which is far too high. The teleport-heal one (merciful intervention) is especially useless.
Spirit weapons-All of these are completely useless except for the shield, which plays second fiddle to wall of reflect. Only intense projectile fights make you consider the spirit shield.
Consecrations- Great but please make sanctuary not rubbish.
Signets-Bane signet (power) is okay for the passive. In PvP the knockdown is alright. Signet of judgement has a useful but selfish damage reduction passive. Wrath (condition) and mercy (healing) both have awful passives. Wrath has a half decent active but you have to put up with an awful passive if you want to use it. The active on mercy has a cast time far too long, the radius is far too small, and the cooldown is far too long. Why do so many other classes do utility revives better than the guardian?
Elites-Tomes are just meh. They need a real rethink.

Weapons I have issue with
Torch-useless. I don’t even know where to start. I used it once for the first time in ages in the dry top mine to see in front of me before I realised there were free torches for everyone at the entrance.
Shield-I like #4. #5 stops you doing other things and doesn’t last long enough, make it off the global cooldown and instantly pop up a projectile block around yourself which moves with you and lasts longer. Both cooldowns are far too high.
Mace-Awful dps, awful & slow auto attack heal but better than nothing. #3 is a time wasting block which gives you either a tiny amount of damage after some seconds standing around like an idiot or a tiny amount of protection. Neither of which are worth hitting the #3 key for. Regen symbol is good in theory but suffers the same mobility problems as all symbols.
Sword-Make this cleave properly please. It’s the one thing holding it back from actually being a viable choice compared to 2h sword if you ever want to pick just 1 melee weapon and hold a staff or scepter in your offhand. The #3 skill is just ridiculous. It misses easily and roots you, and barely increases dps anyway.

Valor
Minors
Valorous defense-I know it’s a minor trait but 90 seconds is a very long cooldown.
Courageous Return-Not bad I suppose for a minor, but realistically most people putting points in Valor are attempting to NOT go downed.
Might of the protector-Pointless. We don’t have enough blocks to make this useful, and most people putting points in Valor aren’t focussing on dps.
Majors
Meditation Mastery-Standard. Passive, great for meditation specs.. though some of the skills could use tweaks.
Defender’s flame-Burn on block. We don’t have enough blocks to make this useful. I care so little about 1 second of burning that I haven’t even tested if it procs off aegis. I’m guessing no. Is it guaranteed or just a proc chance? Nobody cares enough to test.
Strength of the fallen-Has anybody ever taken this?
Strength in Numbes-Great choice.
Purity-Decent but selfish choice. Make it 600 radius groupwide and we might have a good deal.
Retributive Armor-Decent dps choice if you’re going 10 points in Valor for some reason. Not sure I understand it though.
Mace of justice-Good choice for healbots. 5% damage bonus is a waste of programming.
Glacial heart-Recharge is too long, too easily removed.
Honorable shield-Meh. Shield 4 is good. With some tweaks the projectile block could be useful. Cooldowns are too long even with the trait, and the trait only affects 2 of our 5 skills just like all 1h traits.
Focused Mind-Standard for dps meditation builds.
Altruistic Healing-Selfish but does great at keeping you alive.
Communal Defenses- Decent but as with most support skills the radius is too low to be useful enough to spec into. An investment into a GM trait needs to be guaranteed. Our Virtue of Courage recharge rate is a little too long to make this useful.

Conclusion
Overall valor could do with some less selfish traits. It is a trait line frowned upon in pve. I think rolling a couple of the meditation traits together and possible making the Meditation heal affect allies would be interesting if you rework some of the more rubbish meditation skills. I think the mace/shield trait combo is poorly placed, it makes it almost impossible to grab useful traits for any non dps orientated 1h+offhand user without a huge sacrifice. If I want to play the archetypical guardian such as the one in the gw2 pictures with a mace and shield I can’t specialise for it without giving up one of the grandmaster traits? ugh.

Honor
Minors
Vigorous Precision-Yeah I’ll take it. Shame it got nerfed.
Selfless Daring-Best dodge trait in the game imo.
Elusive Power-Nobody is speccing Honor for dps, and this trait rewards bad dodges. It doesn’t make much sense and is poorly placed. The adept minor also works against the grandmaster minor..
Majors
Wrathful spirit-3 seconds of retalliation after aegis? Not worth it.
Superior Aria-Amazing. Shouts are brilliant.
Writ of exaltation-Have it turn symbols into mobile auras perhaps. Currently I feel there are too many symbol traits needed to make symbols good. Perhaps merge with one or more of the other symbol traits.
Resolute healer-The shield #5 is bad enough. This trait manages to be even worse. And is the cooldown 90 seconds still? Omg.
Pure of heart-Awful healing amount, not enough to care about. Plus if you’re on 100% hp and get hit.. aegis blocks it.. you then outheal.. great.
Resolute healer-Why can’t we get something useful like mesmer’s feedback on revive? And this only lasts 1 second? Trash. Make it shield of wrath (focus #5) and now we’re talking. This trait is so bad I wrote about it twice. Fortunately Honor has way too many useful traits for anyone to care about the really bad ones.
Writ of Persistence-Again-merge some of these symbol traits please. There are too many.
Empowering might-240 radius is too small to be useful. Also the inner cooldown of 1 second reduces effectiveness with weapons that have a 1 second attack time like staff and aoe attacks. There’s potential to create very viable support builds here by making this similar to Warrior’s Phalanx might boon.
Two handed mastery-Decent choice.
Pure of Voice-Lost its shine after it was fixed to not convert two conditions. In today’s climate conditions are too quickly reapplied for this to be super useful.
Battle presence-Solid choice for healers.
Force of WIll-Solid choice for selfish people.

Conclusion
I like honor, it can be very useful. With a tweak to elusive power (10% dmg when endurance is full perhaps) it could compete with other trait lines for a spot in meta dps builds and increase choice and diversity. Symbols turned into auras would be good, otherwise rolling the symbol traits into 1 trait opens up a lot more gameplay options. There is also room to make a good might buffing support guardian by making empowering might not rubbish.

This is all in my opinion. This is coming from someone who primarily plays pve as a dpser or lately as a non meta healer. I don’t do much solo roaming, spvp etc on my guardian, though I do wvw mostly as a tanky healer. Hopefully this can act as a point of discussion or provide some feedback to anet ahead of the incoming balance pass.

Zeal
Minors
Zealots Speed-Decent for an adept minor.
Symbolic Exposure-Again, decent for a minor, the duration is a bit low though.
Symbolic Power-Awful for a minor, does not add any meaningful dps. Suggest a bleed proc on crit to improve condition builds.
Majors
Binding Jeopardy-5 vulnerability for 8 seconds on immobilize.
We have 2 immobs on a 15 and 20 second cooldown. If it’s damage you’re after, Fiery Wrath is much better. I don’t see why anybody would take this.
Fiery Wrath-Amazing.
Protector’s Impact-Standard 50% falling damage reduction.
Revenge of the fallen-Has anyone ever actually picked this?
Shattered aegis-Damage is far too low to care about. We actually preferred the burning. A very poor change from last patch.
Spirit weapon mastery-Spirit weapons are garbage except the shield, this trait is only ever picked on gimmick fights where you absolutely must have maximum projectile defense.
Zealous Blade-The healing is still far too low to care about. Nobody takes this with the intention of healing, it’s all about the 5% damage.. which is actually quite low for a master trait.
Focused Mastery-Standard, though I find it highly irritating that 2h weapon traits give you cooldown reductions for all 5 skills compared to 1h weapon traits.
Scepter Power-Bit boring but 10% damage is good.
Eternal spirit-Has anyone ever bothered to command a spirit weapon anyway?
Wrathful spirit-Do spirit weapons actually do damage?
Kindled zeal-We don’t have enough conditions to care enough about 13% condition damage. Why would I be gearing for power and conditions anyway? Wtf?
Amplified Wrath-Has anybody actually ever used this? Ever? Even with like 2000 condition damage this is going to give me ~250 more burning damage per second. That’s just awful for a GM trait.

Conclusion
Zeal suffers from extremely poor high end traits. Going past 10 (15 for hammers) isn’t seen as very useful, with 20 for greatsword users only a half decent possibility. There’s almost nothing except straight damage modifiers. If you’re going to push conditions on us there’s still room here for some half decent traits. What about turning Binding Jeopardy into applying cripple whenever you burn?

Radiance
Minors
Justice is Blind-Amazing
Renewed Justice-Amazing
Radiant Power-Amazing
These minors are what every traitline should be like. Interesting, mechanic changing, active, and potentially gameplay changing.
Majors
Healer’s retribution-3 seconds of retalliation? Are you kidding me? Useless.
Signet Mastery-Our signets aren’t worth putting on our bars, let alone worth using. Okay perhaps the 10% damage reduction signet is useful in a selfish way.
Shimmering defense-60 second cooldown makes it worthless.
Inner fire-How often are we set on fire? 3 seconds of fury is nothing anyway.
Searing flames-Boons are too commonly applies in both pve and pvp. 1 boon every 10 seconds is nothing.
Radiant fire-Nobody uses the torch.
A fire inside-Nobody uses spirit weapons for dps, and burning is already permanently on most targets anyway.
Inscribed removal-2/4 of our utility signets have awful passives, none of the on-use effects are great either. Possibly the knockdown in pvp.
Powerful Blades-Again sadly the best trait is a passive one.
Right Hand Strength-Again. Passive. Best trait in the tree.
Perfect inscriptions-20% extra of 180 stats = 36. 36 stat points for a grandmaster trait? What a joke.
Radiant Retalliation-Quirky I suppose, though I can’t really see a decent condition build with 30 points in radiance.

Conclusion
My biggest complaint with radiance is that if you try to put points in it and don’t want to use a 1h weapon.. once you go past 15 points for the awesome minor trait I challenge you to find a half useful trait.. go on! I leave the Master trait empty half the time out of protest when using a 2h sword.

Just wanted to drop in and say kudos to John for actually engaging with the players and acting like a real person. Really appreciate it, and it’s great to see someone from anet actually chatting with us like real people whether it’s feedback, questions, whining or just banter.

Thanks for your thoughts DroidDreamer, they obviously come from having a lot of experience in the field. I think the healing this build can put out is incredible. Yes the damage is lower than pvt gear but tbh everyone has low damage anyway and there are other classes who can put out better damage while still maintaining tankiness and group support anyway, so I am a fan of guardians doing what they do best while warriors do what they do best. I’d rather have damage orientated warriors and healing guards than damage guards and healing warriors! Gotta maximise what you’re good at!

I really hope that anet merge some of the many symbol traits together. Possibly the radius and duration traits info one improved symbol trait.
Mace 3 and shield 5 I also think could use a buff.

Been using this with full ventari/cleric gear for a while now in WvW and FotM49 and have some comments.

Battle presence heals for more than Writ of Mercy does and is automated, it’s also smart-cast meaning it will target injured people, and also has a higher uptime. Comparatively the symbols heal whoever is given the boon, and the boon does not prioritise people who are injured.. so Battle Presence gets the grandmaster trait pick imo as the most efficient healing output trait we have.

For the adept trait I think you’re crazy not to have Superior Aria. SYG, Retreat and Hold the Line are all incredible with this build both in wvw and pve even if you only end up taking 1-2 of them.. there’s even an argument for SY if you lack vigor. If it was between Superior Aria and Writ of the Merciful then maybe we have a discussion, but the radius increase just isn’t good enough. I might even prefer Protective Reviver over the radius increase. You’re almost always going to hit 5 ppl per tick in wvw zergs anyway, and in pve people will either be static and stacking, or mobile and not in your symbols for long anyway even with the radius trait. In both cases the radius trait doesn’t add much value. Radius is helpful only when not stacking in pve and adds maybe 1 more tick as people run through it, and almost never in wvw. Aria is useful all the time.

That leaves us with the master trait. You can still take Writ of the Merciful , I don’t think there’s anything better. I think it’s better than the duration extension because although 2 more ticks of regen vs 5 ticks of symbol heal is roughly equal in terms of total hp healed, the increase in healing in value per tick makes the healing symbols more important than the duration when people are mobile. From here if I have ~50% uptime on a ~650hp/sec symbol tick including the regen I don’t really see the point of upping that to 70% uptime through the duration increase, because even if every single additional tick hits it still won’t be as much as battle presence, solidifying my choice of battle presence earlier. In short I’d say the strong point of the symbols are the regeneration ticks. Adding another ~50% healing on top via Writ of Mercy is decent, but it all falls apart when people are mobile anyway, and it’s certainly not guaranteed enough to spend 2 or even 3 trait slots on.

I don’t like Purity of Body because as far as I know it doesn’t stack with Vigor, and even if it did.. 250 healing power from Mace of Justice will output more healing than 15% more selfless darings. The evade is a non point, you’re not gonna die anyway, it’s your allies you need to worry about.

It’s not really a fair vote because it’s aimed at Forum users and possibly reddit users.

The best metric will simply be anets in game data on how many people played and for how long, which I suspect is what drove their decision.

Can someone explain what all the drama is about to someone who never really did wvw before?
Is this to do with desolation all of a sudden getting really good and beating everyone?

leebe.2093:

failing an event is not an exploit

This was not anets stance when people were abusing the mortar engineer bridge event. People got banned.

Same.
We also have the 2nd anniversary sales coming up.

is the first tag you buy still blue or will we be given 1 option?
what if we already have a tag?

Can you tell us more about your sigil and rune choices?
How much does water sigil heal and how often ? How much does water rune heal and how often?
Are there any other runes you’d consider? Dolyak would scale incredibly but it’s a bit selfish. I suppose you’re the last to die anyway?

If the only life threatening incoming damage can be avoided, you only need as much defense as mistakes you foresee yourself making.

As you improve as a player, you make less mistakes, correctly time your dodges/blocks, and do not need defensive stats. This means you can gear zerker.
It does not mean all zerkers are good players, many use zerker gear without the correct dodge/block timings. However there is little reason for a good player to gear for anything except more dps, since they will naturally avoid life threatening damage anyway.

If you increase the amount of unavoidable damage, thus forcing people to gear defensive/regenerative, this has two very negative impacts on the game:
Reduced reliance on player skill.
Reduced reliance on an active style of combat.
Personally I would like to see fights where not only are blocks/dodges required to keep a zerker alive, but there is also enough unavoidable damage to require a dedicated healer. Some changes need to be made to allow this though: currently heals, boons and support skills are mostly far too low radius to be useful which is actually one of the reasons why we see lots of stacking. Currently as movement increases, usefulness of healing and support decreases.

Interestingly, and I’ve said it for a while now Mai Trin (and many other tough fights) is easymode if you simply have a dedicated guardian healer. You can all literally just stack on the guardian and afk her to 0%. Most dungeons aren’t challenging enough to warrant mitigation or healing though. Not only that but you can group up and rez the pugs who died to cannons in complete safety.

My guardian looks like she is wearing light armor anyway ^^ just waiting for that katana skin…
https://dviw3bl0enbyw.cloudfront.net/uploads/forum_attachment/file/100367/VXrfGCw_1_.jpg

Merge some of the symbol or spirit weapon traits. There are currently too many.

Take a good long think about the permanent light field from hammer and whether it’s actually useful.

Make scepter 2 a symbol.

Improve spirit weapons and signets.

Reduce virtue cool down.

1 nomad in a small group of balanced killers works nice I hear.

Haven’t wvwd in ages, curious how things are nowadays.

Thanks for your writeup. I am currently considering creating some nomad gear for wvw so this is useful.

Why no battle presence though? Wouldn’t the ticks from that be higher than healing symbols and also be guaranteed to hit 5 people? Especially with absolute resolution, that makes it insane.

Shame you can’t fit in the 250 healing power mace trait.

Thanks for the data though I was just trying to decide between buying keys vs turning gems into gold.

Class/build ideas for someone using the toughness/vitality/healing gear? First thought was guardian but not sure if anyone else does it better, possibly shout war or healing ele?

Please don’t tell me how much it sucks. I know all about the meta and have zerkers on standby.

KerryTT.4792:

I’ll add my two cents. I am a moron who occasionally will buy black lion keys, so this attracted my like a dog to something foul smelling on the ground. I started with 6 claim scraps already on hand.
First 25 keys, 12 claim scraps, nothing exciting. (total 18)
Decided, what the heck, let’s go again.
Second 25 keys, 3 claim tickets, 18 scraps, plus several 1G+ minis, and some extra keys. Jackpot… (total 6 tickets)
For some reason, which escapes me, I decided to go one more time But this time I would open the chests in my Home instance for luck (adult beverages might have been involved)
25 keys… 8 claim scraps.. not much else.. stupid idea… (6 tickets, 8 scraps)
I ran a new character through the storyline to get a key and then decided to buy 5 keys. I used 6 keys and got 2 scraps. So, a total of 7 Claim tickets after all this.
Since I ended with no spare scraps, I am almost positive I am done for a while…. maybe. Good luck to the rest of you that try it.

That’s almost 7000 gems, current exchange rate means you spent over 650 gold for just 7 claim tickets that sucks.

There’s not much point. The most involved members of the community and the most knowledgeable were mostly perma banned from the forums a long time ago, or temp banned so many times they stopped coming back. What you’re left with isn’t really worth anet listening to.