Guild Wars 2

I will repost what have posted on a thread in Guardian forum

I’ll be talking from PvE stand-point; here I go…
Changes are extremely underwhelming. Patch notes claim to be targeting under-used things, though Valor trait line is untouched, we still don’t have a Spirit Weapon or Signet rework, Mace and Hammer skills are still needlessly sluggish, and there are MANY things that still could use small touches (not going to list them, you all know what they are).

I’m looking how feedback is being recieved and being put into good use when addressing the issues with other professions; and Guardian is still problematic.
We are not asking things to become overpowered, we are not asking those things to become meta for Guardian, we are just asking for build diversity and viability. But every patch, we go back to same boring stuff while other professions are getting shiny new toys. Those toys may not be super-special-awesome, but at least people dont look at half of their utilities and traits and say “wtf, why would I even use this?”.

Additional comments I would like to make;

These are pretty much what majority of people (well, at least people who are vocal) think after every patch that has been disappointing for Guardian.

This patch, GS changes were good, I love the fact that you are still trying to bring base Guardian tools to be on the same line as Dragonhunter, but there are still very big missing parts, and every time a balance patch misses the opportunity to address these things that have been discussed everywhere, people losing their hope more and more. At least give us some feedback.

Thank you.

I’ll be talking from PvE stand-point; here I go…

Changes are extremely underwhelming. Patch notes claim to be targeting under-used things, though Valor trait line is untouched, we still don’t have a Spirit Weapon or Signet rework, Mace and Hammer skills are still needlessly sluggish, and there are MANY things that still could use small touches (not going to list them, you all know what they are).

I’m looking how feedback is being recieved and being put into good use when addressing the issues with other professions; and Guardian is still problematic.

We are not asking things to become overpowered, we are not asking those things to become meta for Guardian, we are just asking for build diversity and viability. But every patch, we go back to same boring stuff while other professions are getting shiny new toys. Those toys may not be super-special-awesome, but at least people dont look at half of their utilities and traits and say “wtf, why would I even use this?”.

Ok, the biggest problem with your question is the approach of “support guardian”.

Slapping a tanky gear with healing power on a guardian or investing heavily into boon duration just because “guard gives too much boons y’all!” is not supporting your team. I really like the idea of more traditional palladin-y approach to the builds, and I really wish it worked; I really do. But this is GW2 and this is Guardian; things work differently.

Your “supportness” does not come from clunky builds or wonky armors, it’s built into the class. You support with reflects, blinds, protection uptime, crowd control, AoE pressure and, as the game dictates, damage.

Things need to die fast in this game. That’s why you need to bring some sort of DPS to the table. In raids, there will be couple of roles that can give up on damage for heals/tanking/offensive supporting through buffing others’ damage; but that’s not how guardian generally works. We don’t have a super reliable way to heal 10 people at the moment, so if you are not going to tank the raids, you need berserker gear (best option atm).

You will be supporting by Hammer symbols, you will be reflecting enemy projectiles, you will use stuns/pulls/etc. on mobs/bosses to make things easier, you will pull some small healings occasionally; and you will dish out great damage, because in this game, that is important. The faster the enemy dies, the less your teammates will recieve damage.

As long as the skills themselves dont change in an interesting, meaningful way, Signets will always be very questionable. The only signet that is really useful is the one that gives power; because, well, it gives power and active is useful for breakbars.

I’m always happy when base guardian abilites recieve buffs, and they get better and better every patch. Though why are the spirit weapons still useless is beyond me. The only useful one is the shield, and it can be clunky as hell sometimes.

I dont do sPvP much, at least not as much as I used to pre-HoT; so I dont mind the nerfs as much as other people do; and frankly they were justified. The only thing that concerns me is the Daze trait nerf; which, correct me if I’m wrong about how they work, will effect our power against breakbars.

1) Spirit Weapons rework

2) Signets rework

3) More synergy between traits / rework on underpowered traits

4) Shorter cast times on hammer skills

5) Resiatance boon added to Guardian’ s kitten nal. (It feels absurd to me that a profeasion based on defensive supporting and keeping your allies alive not having access to it)

Activating at 25% is better imho. Thanks to our low hp and good survivability skills, we constantly lose good % hp and then heal it at the sam time. And the trait proccing at 50% when we absolutely did not need it and could have easily healed back would just waste it…

Westwater.1095:

Not really to be honest. Our best DPS build is still the hammer dragonhunter. Sword is about 15-20% lower DPS than hammer, even with the new symbol. If you really need a shield like to knock back seekers in VG then sword is a viable option now, but hammer is still the top stuff.

Even then, going mace+shield is better for heals and block.

The changes are better for pvp scene.

My end-game is Legendary Weapons.

I am planning to craft at least 1 of them for each weapon type my main can use (guardian). So far I have Bolt, Sunrise, Juggernaut, Flameseeker Prophecies and Rodgort; currently working on Ad Infinitum and Nevermore. I am not in a raiding guild and it kills me to be not able to get legendary armor when it comes.

All the things I do in game are just means to my quest for legendaries. (Maybe except for WvW, it is just amazing)

@Asmodal

I was talking about instanced pve perspective, I should have been more clear.

In those situations the important thing is single target DPS. I also think condi guard has the highest dps in game against multiple enemies when given the time to apply the burn.

cloudysan.4397:

toaster messiah.7320:

A trait specified to a single weapon skill is not a healthy change.

Instead, something like “when you blind an enemy while wielding a longbow, also apply a knockback. 10 sec ICD”

This way, not only the effect is still tied to the longbow, you also have a little bit more access to it with F1 or combo fields.

This feels like the best way to do it. But what about Purification blinding the enemy?

True, I did not think about that. Then maybe just “longbow attacks” is sufficient.

Dragonhunter traits have great damage modifiers. If you take DH for condi, you are kind of wasting the potential.

Condi build is better than what it used to be, but power builds recieved great buffs, which made it even better than condi, making the gap between them bigger.

A trait specified to a single weapon skill is not a healthy change.

Instead, something like “when you blind an enemy while wielding a longbow, also apply a knockback. 10 sec ICD”

This way, not only the effect is still tied to the longbow, you also have a little bit more access to it with F1 or combo fields.

Auto chain and Mighty Blow is great. The problem is with other skills.

Faster cast on 3rd and 4th skill; and allowing movement while casting the 5th skill should be the chamges we see. They are mostly very easy to avoid as they are right now.

Elite trap was really fine as it was; I understand the nerf to other traps, but Maw is much less appealing now.

The changes are pretty good. I’ve already started using it in WvW.
Still waiting for a good Shield Trait though…

Nice to see you are working on the improvements Karl.
Although, I personally would like to see improvement on Pure of Sight trait and range increase on Wings of Resolve. I hope you are considering these changes as well.

…we should trust in the decisions of developers on skills and provide useful information about the skills/traits they give us; why they do not work as intended, as they designed; and tell them obvious flaws (though, i am not sure if “flaw” is the right word) and ask for fix.

Instead of ‘’This skill/trait is bad, use this instead", the feedback we’re giving should be like “Cooldown feels a bit too long” or “Rage too short”. It’s much easier (and likely) for devs to tweak skills and traits by adding/substracting properties than entirely rework how they play.

For example; we all want better shield skills, since they are just awfully incompetent with other Off-Hand weapon skills. Suggesting different skills with all new animations, sound effects and balancing issues will get us nowhere (no matter how awesome ideas they are). Those threads just invisible to the devs’ eyes. Instead, just provide info on why they are not useful, and point out possible “fixing” posibilites with good reasoning. For example, getting additional boon and damage increase on Shield 4; or cast time reduction on Longbow 5; or projectile speed increase on Scepter 1 are much more likely to happen than super-special-awesome rework ideas.

That being said; do not stop creating threads that introduce new, amazing ideas.
Just because they are (almost always) not impacting devs’ plans for future skill/trait tweaks, doesn’t mean they do not use those ideas for new traits and weapon skills, and utilites, etc. Just be more realistic and expect reasonable respond from devs to your complaints/ideas for the things we are suffering from (still looking at you, Shield).

Sorry for the kinda wall-ish text. I’m almost sure it’ll just be ignored; but even if I reach one person, it just increases the possibility of our chance to make our voices reach to the devs.

PS: Ignore all of this when you’re talking about Spirit Wepons. Those kittens really need gigantic overhaul.

Puncture Shot: Yes, please rework the cripple function. Requiring more than one enemy is really hurting the skill. Most PvP and a lot of pve scenarios often put you in a situation where you cannot utilize the skill in this form.

Maybe make it bounce up to 2 times and give it ‘’Cripple enemies with Burning or Bleeding with certain treshold’’ (3 stack burn, 2 stack bleed) ?

Deflecting Shot: I believe most people are complaining because of the speed of the skill and how you can’t fire it behind you. Skill is so fast that it can block very few projectiles.

Maybe add a small knock-back to compensate?

I used Ley Line Longbow during the BWE event. Made me feel like I killed one of those Mordrem Archers and took their wep to kill them. Plus, blue stuff make me happy :P

OH Mace / with control effects
OH Sword / with condi applications
NO OFFHAND OPTION / where we get 2 skills; they act the same for all MH weapons but they get different secondary effects for each of them.

Zerk is your safe bet; but condi guard is so much fun. Plus; the DPS loos on single target is very minimal; but the DPS gain on AoE is huge.

I will probably find time only for PvE, but I’ll write my plans for all game modes.

PvE: condi burst with trap bleeds
WvW: roam with trapper runes
PvP: hambow master race

Shelter is just too good to pick RtL over it. Maybe in dungeons and open world pve I could see myself using it, but mostly for the LOLz.

Shelter is THE heal skill in the game; that I would pick in everysingle character I create if I could… 2 seconds of block with devent heal in a good CD? Good luck with any other heal…

Some of the players have done it the day after patch. I’ll edit with the reddit link if I can find it…

Varolite.7615:

Thanks! Probably ill try to rerun my guard, i still have my scholar runes and runes of force. What can you recommend for the other sigil slots?:)

Fire sigil or accuracy sigil should work fine imo

Not at all. Actually the burn guard is only widely played in pvp, and bit even by all guard players. Meta build still sticks with power builds. You can play as burn guard in any game mode. Though the results are not always the best outcome.

I assume you are asking from roaming perspective. .. If not, the answer is definitely Guardian with altruistic healing.

For roaming though; I have always been a huge fan of dd elementalist and pu mesmer.

Darknicrofia.2604:

you didn’t force jack by doing it in wvw, its tequatl getting melted down after having its HP doubled that forced the fix.

I have seen gates going down faster than how it would have been with siege, with 20+ Guardians,; so yeah…

If the trait line goes live as it was introduced, I dont see myself playing DH in any game mode. Just so weak and lacking synergies compared to other lines so far

Wait… WHAT?! We have shield??!!!?!

If the cooldown for traps will be shorter than what they revealed to us; I can see the build to be viable for solo or small group WvW roaming…

Ssshh… Don’t give them any ideas! Or else they will nerf that trait, too…

There were changes that looked like nerf; but they were mostly for the compensation of upcoming condition changes. (for example; they nerfed a trait that increases burning damage, but with the new burning changes, your damage should be around the same for each individual skill)

There were some straight up nerfs; like the virtue range reduction, Fiery Wrath, internal cooldown implements on somt traits, etc. Some of them should go unnoticed in the gameplay, we’ll see.

There were also some new traits and number changes in terms of buffs; which will most definitely open up new build options, and probably will change the most preferred build styles.

I don’t think any of the changes are a ’’nerf’’ to the Berserker gear. They will probably always be one of the better stat combinations. With the new condition changes, the ‘’meta armor’’ might change to something like Sinister armor, but Berserker should still be perfectly viable. However, this might change with Heart of Thorns expansion, if the mobs have too much condition or something, and our condi cleanse skills are not enough. Then, we might change to some gear with vitality on it. We’ll have to wait and se for that though.

It really pains me to see that none of the problems with Guardian shield and Spirit Weapons have been touched. With the new focus trait, shield has become even less viable, and Spirit Weapons are still limited to shield in terms of usefulness, and in a very situational and gimmicky way.

If we dont count the Colossus I got from mystic forge and Kraitkin from random mob, my best was “Monocle” from the original Mai Tirin dungeon (i dont remember the name) . It peaked at 400 something gold at some point. But I was an idiot and did not sell it, so they introduced that item later again and the prices dropped…. I made 70-80 gold evem after the price drop though

Iason Evan.3806:

Little known fact: “Grandmaster Faster” was my rap name in the 80’s.

I’m in love with that!
10/10 would buy album

For regular dungeons and open world pve, you can pretty much always gor with berserker armor. If you don’t think will survive with that (be it your lag problems, or you don’t trust yourself with your gameplay) you can support it with a tanky rune set or accessories.

For fractals, a little tankiness really is needed at high level fractals. You can go with knight armor and/or a little tanky traits, accesorries and stuff.

For example; I use full berserker armor, runes and traits with some tanky accessories for dungeons; and knight armor, soldier runes, a little tanky dps traits with berserker accessories for fractals. (and full tanky everything gor wvw, if you care about that). This way I’m not all squishy or very clunky tank with no dps.

The problem with shield and focus is not about what they do durrently. It’s about what they don’t do… Let me be more clear with this.

Shield does have block, like other shields. It blocks Projectiles, and blocks them for allies as well (unlike others) as intended with the profession’s design. As you can see with this skill and the 4th skill; shield is designed with supportive intentions.

Focus is more ‘’personal gain’’ weapon. The block it gives is only for you (unless you’re trying to block a skill-shot lol). Also; the blocks the focus gives you is coming from a spell. As you can see with the visuals; you’re blocking with a spell, not the weapon itself. Thus, it’s irrelevant to say ‘’how can a focus block and a shield can’t’’ (not trying to say you say that, just trying to make my point).

Now… The problem with these weapons are; 4th shield skill is just too uneffective with that cooldown; that mediocre damage and that lack of any effect on your opponents (it needs weakness or vulnerability attached to it, imho) and 5th skill has a little bit long CD as well.

Focus has long cooldowns as well; combined with any weapon; it just makes you a boring auto-attack fighter. (which is just my opinion. most people do like focus; i do as well. I just find it very… um… ‘’place holdery’’ weapon. If that makes any sense to you)

Apolo.5942:

GUARDIANS SHOULD NOT HAVE RANGED WEAPONS PERIOD.

Guardians are defensive CASTERS… They are not your vanilla tanks. They are a hybrid class by design, stop forcing stereotypes in games.

If they do implement a change on this; I really hope that the NPCs will call us by the title we got from personal story.

For example; a Norn character is called ’’Slayer’’, after killing Issormir in the Great Hunt. I would love to hear this detail about my player’s development from the NPCs…
And I do not think it would be weird; because Eir calls us that in all personal story chapters, it wont be the first time us hearing that.

I’m so sad it’s going to be A again…

We can only hope to get some upgrades to Shield, Torch and Spirit Weapons that’ll make them actually playable.

I really support the idea of being able to change the hand orientation of a character.

I’m using my right; but I really get your problem.

I played Path of Exile for a while. I wanted to play the class ’’Templar’’ so much, but he was a lefty and I couldn’t stand seeing him swinging the mace with his left hand. It bothered me so much, I had to switch to another class.

Maybe it’s just me and my weird habits that it bothered me that much, but I’m just trying to say that; it can be really frustrating for some people. Just go try playing an FPS game with the gun in your left hand and you’ll see…

I use hammer in zerg and while roaming as a group, both in midscale and largescale. And I use shouts while doing these; since they are more group oriented.

I use meditations in solo and smallscale roaming, since they give more personal benefits. But I mostly use GS and Sword/Focus in these situations.

When I use Hammer, I know I’ll be playing a more immobile role, and I do not think having the Judge’s Intervention is enough to make up for it, so I drop it completely and focus on the stationary gameplay.

The new trait is fine as it is. It is a good alternative for people who want to invest in that trait line but do not want any supportive traits. If you’re running a more ’’selfish’’ build, this is a trait to go. Not everybody runs the shout build, you know.

3k health is not irrelevant. Every bit of extra health you get from traits give you the opportunity to invest more in ‘’dps stats’’ if that’s your thing. Plus, low hp pool is one of the cons of guardian and people who are trying to balance out dps, support and tank roles in one build should really appretiate this new trait, because having a maxed out Honor is still not really enough hp for those types of builds.

The problem with this trait is that’s reaaaaaly boring. It’s uninteresting to see ‘’You get 300 Vitalty’’ in a trait’s text-box. Different and more interactive mechanics would make it more fun.

I also have one more things to say for everyone complaining about new stuff all the time:
Whenever we get something new, you always assume that it’s gonna be a better version of what you’re using right now, and you’ll have to change into it and it’s gonna suck for you. NO… They are simply giving you a new choice for that slot. If it’s not your thing, dont use it, stick to whatever you’re using and move on.

Longbow with Burning, Torment, Vulnerability and a hard CC would be awesome.

It’s a good buff for WvW zerg play, where the staff is REALLY useful…

Me happy. Now change the 2nd skill…

Mace auto attack chain DPS is actually strong. Throw in the symbol and blast from block skill, you have a pretty good dps weapon that also heals you and other melee allies.

But it’s potential can be maximized in immobile fights. If you’ll need to move a lot, other melee weapons are better.

Cooldowns on Shield are extremely long for what they do, especially the 4th skill. 5th is a decent skill, but its CD is also too long for a situational supportive skill.

CD reduction on both skills and rework on 4th could make shield more useful.

Flubble.8093:

dwarves have big beards, beards get shaved off as soon as you put a helmet on

laughed so hard… oh god…

Hello,

My character owns a Juggernaut, and love the effect it brings to the armor he’s wearing. But I’ve realized an issue with it while using a Grenth’s Hood skin on his helmet.

The mercury coating effect takes place on the mask part of the hood, not the cloth part. This causes a very ugly display of outfit. It feels like the cloth is not a part of the armor.

Any chance you can fix this in an upcoming patch?
Thanks.