RUNICBLACK.7630

> @"Crab Fear.1624" said:

> > @"kharmin.7683" said:

> > I disagree. Not having a set trinity system or specifically designated "roles" for professions is what makes GW2 unique in the genre. I would not like to be pushed into a small sub-set of professions just to clear content.

>

> I understand that you disagree, but you have not validated your point of how this (what we have) is better.

>

And nowhere in your argument have you validated your point of view either, you have just expressed your opinion as if it were fact .

Just to let you know texting "As a matter of fact " doesn't make your following statement a fact it is still just a turn of phrase if you have no supporting Data to go with it and please refrain from using circular logic to support your statements.

Short answer is No, longer answer is because of the Major Adept trait in Virtues : Master of Consecrations which increases the duration of all Consecration by 2 seconds and reduces the recharge time by 20% so if they were to change Shelter to a Consecration it then give the player a 4 second block which by all appearances is a do not cross red line. Now if they were to change the Master of Consecrations in some way so as to not run afoul of this then sure. (Personal opinion I'd be all for changing MoC so as to make taking Consecrations more useful because as they are presently most have very limited usefulness in my opinion). I hope this helped.

As an alternative, just remove the increased symbol size fully from the trait and replace it with the effect that the guardian receives the full benifit (boons) from any symbols that they place irrelevant as to whether or not they are inside of the symbol, thus removing the limitation of the guard having be forced to be inside of the symbol to gain any benifit from the symbols boons. While this wouldn't have a huge impact on those weapons that drop a symbol at the guardians feet it would be hugely helpful for the ranged symbols.

Great examples would be the swiftness from the staff(as it stands to gain the full swiftness by staying in the symbol is utterly counter intuitive)

Gaining the might from the scepter without having to be in the symbol.

And finally in my personal opinion the best fix for the lackluster damage and usefulness of the DH Longbow would be to change the LB boon from Vigor(which never made sense) to a 1 or 2 second per pulse of Quickness this way you don't need to increase the damage directly but you do increase it indirectly by increasing its rate of fire and of course the Quickness only applies to those inside of the symbol(baring the Guardian with this modification of the trait) and we are only talking about boons so they have their weakness in that they can be corrupted or stripped etc.

How about having Zealot's Fire (the rollover skill from skill 4 Zealot's Flame) have a better chance of actually hitting a target at range. I do agree that reworking or at least improving the Hammer would time better spend by the Dev's, but if your going to bring up the torch Zealot's Fire is a great deal more annoying when it comes to barely hitting a target at any range (and that is one who isn't moving at any range, if they are moving at any range you can pretty much forget about hitting them)

As an alternative how about improving or increasing the duration of reveal on the classes (note that mesmer and the ele doesn't have access to it at all)

Tharan please stop hijacking the thread, from the beginning Otto stated that this was about PvE. If you want to discuss PvP start a thread yourself to bring up your opinion. I'm sure you have some interesting points to bring up and we can all respect your view or not but sidetracking another persons topic entirely in no way gives any validity to your argument.

> @"Virtuality.8351" said:

> As for the changes in Virtue skills, I really doubt ArenaNet would allow us such luxury to enjoy their active effects while retaining the passive ones at the same time. Maybe bind the charge effect with their associated traits as a balance factor? I mean, we do have one grandmaster tier major traits for each virtues.

>

Actually we already have a trait that does do this but it's on the FB, the Grand Master trait Loremaster along with reducing Tome skills recharge rate by 20% also allows us to retain the Virtues Passive effects while they are on cool down , now that being said I have always thought that maintaining the Passives on cool down should be replaced with something else in the Loremaster trait and the effect should be made available in the Core Guardian line as either its own trait or as part of another trait but that is just my opinion.

> @"chrispy.7182" said:

> * I made a Guardian and I am now level 80.

Congratz

> * I am finding it very difficult to optimise a solo PvE build

Did you level him all the way up or did you insta level him to 80

> * * I need a build with high survivability and decent DPS

Is this a Core Guardian or one of the Elites , you have a lot of options but bare in mind you

will have a bit of adjustment if you haven't worked with the class mechanics all the way thru

Core Tyria and your first time in the HoT and PoF also requires some adjustment (although

this can be said with any of the classes)

> * I want to be able to solo Bounties and Champions

This will totally depend on which bounty or champion your fighting some are easier and

some will be much harder if not impossible depending on your own skill with the class and build

> * Is that possible? Can you please link your builds and give me some tips

Yes and no depending on the details. As far as a link goes check out metabattle.com and there are

also some people that post their builds to youtube and they also give additional pointers

> * Thank you!

>

>

You kind of need a little more info to get any real help being as nobody has any real idea of your skill ,

and just saying Bounties and Champions covers a wide range of difficulties.

> @"Infusion.7149" said:

> I'm _assuming_ you're talking about WvW mainly, since 10 targets is irrelevant in PVP and if you have 5 people on one spot for AoE boons or conditions it means people aren't rotating off point anyway. (Stand Your Ground is still 10 targets in PVE, so I'm not sure what your point about PvE raids is.)

Just for clarity:

I didn't so much have an issue personally but the overall complaint was leveled against it with regard to the Raids in that some players argued that it along with the availability of group Quickness made the Guardian's overall representation in a 10 person Raid groups to high and left to many other classes unwanted and unable to get into raids or at least that was the general argument with regard to Raids. Since they made the modification to Feel My Wrath I haven't read much from the raiding players complaining against Stand Your Ground so it was either Straw Man argument or they aren't feeling as passed over now that Quickness isn't as much of an issue.

I've thinking about this since the last balance patch and I was curious what some of the other players views on this are.

In a nut shell we have various skills and traits that allow some classes the ability to target 10 instead of the normal limit of 5 , the most of these are for boons where they are helping squad mates but some abilities allow for the targeting of 10 enemies.

As it stands it is very uneven across the classes as who can and can't do this, for honesty on this I generally main a guardian and they recently lower the ability of "Stand Your Ground" back down to 5 from 10 , which while from a players point of view I wasn't thrilled with but honestly from overall game play I could see there point considering Stability's impact in WvW and Raids.

What I'm curious about are other players views on this.

Ok I have a question then if they were to swap "Protective Reviver" to the Grand Master tier. If this were to happen hopefully they would improve it's overall effectiveness in some way in consideration that it is now a GM trait and not leave it as it is. What are your personal ideas for a reasonable upgrade to this trait, an easy one would be have it just give the guardian a bonus to healing power either as a straight number or as a percentage off of another stat.

> @"otto.5684" said

> I think there is a misunderstanding of the issue. FB was viable as non-support before, now menders support is the only option. Why cannot FB, and guardian in general, have more than 1 build (which is support) viable? And support queing solo is always a bad idea. If your allies are not good there is nothing to support, so you are obsolete

This exactly the issue at hand that some people either are unaware or refuse to recognize and it doesn't only apply to FB , in that any class be it core or elite that is left as it's only viable build option is as a support class isn't truly viable in competitive pvp in solo que , yes it can compete in AT's but those aren't random players being put together on a team so there really isn't a honest comparison so using it to support an argument that the class is balanced in anyway in competitive pvp is flawed. Support builds while being useful are woefully dependent on the make up of the rest of their team and how well their team work is with a bunch of random players thrown together for a match isn't often the greatest and those leaving the support build player as was said by Otto nothing to support.

**It is important to repeat the point that it is not only an issue for the FB but that any class that is left in such way that it's "only viable build" for competitive solo PvP is support needs to be revisited!

**

Least we forget a certain Necro's sadly departed sister's spirit merging with a Great sword well before anybody was running around as a Reaper

> @"draxynnic.3719" said:

> Personally, at this stage, I'd like to get hold of some of Almorra's kit, and that means an offhand sword.

I suspect that we will be getting her off hand sword, because if you remember alot of the new elites were hinted at and even sometimes shown (at least a beta version) in content before the expac was released(note that this didn't have prefect track record but it wasn't terribly inaccurate).

> @"Hannelore.8153" said:

> If only you had other ways to heal yourself that weren't dependent on the #6 heal skill.

Actually with the nerfing on the Tomes over the various balance patches and the changes they have done to some the Mantra's (particularly Solace as of March which they did not reduce the Mesmer's healing mantra's healing output at all by comparison) unless your running as totally supportive build FB with Mender's , Sage's or maybe Marshall's Amulet with Rune of Flock and the appropriate trait's, weapons etc your pretty wasting your time even bothering with the Mantra's (I quit using them a while ago and just go with Meditations but to be honest I gave up on FB and went to Core Guardian after the Solace hit anyway ).

They should have lowered the healing output on all of the FB skills (both Tomes and Mantras) but given the FB access to Barrier instead but they missed that opportunity , it could have decreased the over powering that some of the existing Guardian traits had when used with the various FB skills that lead to the nerfing that they had to do in later balance patches, they could even have gone so far as to have a Minor trait in the FB line that lowers any of the healing you give but gives out a somewhat better amount of Barrier instead as compensation.

I can get behind the idea of Spear as either a one or two handed weapon along with the off hand sword , torch as a main I'm mixed on.

On the shield I'm not being critical but I've seen a couple people bring up the idea of having a shield in your main hand so as to allow dual wielding shields, while I have always personally thought that this was both a really silly idea and utterly ineffective as a method of combat I looked into it and found that they only possible real world example of it ( please note this is only speculation by historians without any real historical documentation of battles where it was used) is in use as a "Roman Testudo" or Roman Tortoise which is used solely to allow troops to have cover to move forward against archers etc and not for actual person to person combat.

> @"Josiah.2967" said:

> I believe Guardian needs a nerf. They are one of the key components to allow you to bypass raid mechanics. I honestly believe Guardians do to much damage while provided important buffs. I think buff classes should do less damage than non-buff classes to be balanced.

Ok in your opinion classes that give buffs should do less damage than those that don't give buffs. Well that's a little short sighted in that you need to consider what is a buff per say , let's look at a Core Warrior , they don't put out a lot of buffs right or do they? The banners that he has available while not being a straight buff in the sense of Might or Fury etc but they do supply a huge benefit or what about Core Thief they don't supply alot of buffs but they do give group Stealth and group teleports which of course allows parties to BYPASS various game mechanics.

If you are looking at Snowcrows and raid mechanics as a tool to decide which classes are overpowered by how heavily they are represented in any particular suggested raid team make up there are more than few classes that fall into that description but in most cases if you read further into the details and options you would see that the vast majority of DPS classes can very easily be swapped out with another DPS with very little adjustment so again using Raids to support the need for a nerf falls apart just like the buffing class argument does. While I'm not saying that classes don't need evaluation and balancing but I am saying your main supporting points for nerfing the Guardian are lacking in overall merit to support your opinion.

> @"ollbirtan.2915" said:

> Don't you love how Anet thinks? Who in their right mind would take Retreat / Hold the Line even with FULL 5 seconds shorter cooldown? Hammer is still useless - even if you make its skills 3 second cooldown - no one will run it in PVP. Same applies to GS. Anet clearly doesn't even play their own game.

Just an observation that while the change to Retreat (making it an Ammo based skill) isn't hugely dramatic it could have an interesting effect for the support type FB in that it gives them another on demand access to Aegis(and that without having to resort to a tome and in addition Mantra of Solace) granted Pure of Heart's healing has been reduced in WvW but I think it still could helpful.

> @"Kulvar.1239" said:

> > @"frareanselm.1925" said:

> > When I play WVW this crazy thing happened multiple times, I was on the top of a tower defending as a ranger, and a dragonhunter who was on the floor pulls me out of the tower to the floor. Cmon this has zero logic, how can a chain have so OP range that can reach to the top of a tower???

> > This is has no sense, in real life a tower may have at least 12 meters!

> > I hope anet understand hgow OP this is that looks like science fiction. At least the range should be shorter!

>

**_YES I KNOW! Isn't crazy that is about as possible as a ranger firing 12 arrows at a target area in 2 3/4 seconds(Barrage much)_**.... I mean really are you having this discussion about something being unrealistic in a online fantasy game....REALLY!

> @"Ghos.1326" said:

> I'm not a Guardian main, but here is the issue I see with Guardian in terms of the burning.

> Permeating Wrath

> Virtue of Justice's passive triggers more quickly and now burns in an area.

> Burning (4s): 524 Damage

> Number of Attacks to Trigger: 3

> Number of Targets: 5

> Radius: 240

>

> It only takes 3 attacks to trigger the passive Justice effect. That's way too little. Originally, it's 5, and even that is way too little.

> I'd change it to originally take 10 attacks to trigger, and then decrease it when traited to only take 7 attacks to trigger.

That is kind of flawed because you not taking into consideration the fact that most of our weapon attacks do not apply conditions on their own outside of Vulnerability (and that only if traited) along with the fact that because guards don't have access to nor the ability to easily apply many other conditions it is generally much easier to clear the burning we apply when compared to classes that can easily apply 3 or more conditions types in a sequence of attacks. You should also take a closer look at how many stacks of burning a guard can get from any one attack and it's duration in comparison to other classes. If they were to do what you are suggesting they would have make adjustments in those areas also. I'm not saying the guard doesn't have it's strengths but we aren't anywhere even remotely unmatched or over powered in competitive game play particularly in pvp

I myself had no complaints against the Scourge's access to Barrier, nor the Weaver but alot of people thought that Barrier would be part of the Firebrand elite and then when it was found that it wasn't were left really confused with what classes then did gain access to it it. Case in point : The Scrapper ( I at least can kind of rationalize considering the debacle that were the Gryo's) , the Core Elementalist ( kind of shaky ground but at least it is an Earth based bundle , still iffy), Core Ranger, Revenant, Engineer, and on the Warrior's Warhorn (the last one really makes no sense).

This is why so many were left wondering why Barrier wasn't part of the Firebrand package but it reminds me personally of the introduction of Resistance from HoT where it took 2 years before they gave the Guardian Shout "Save Yourselves!" access to it(where without it any use of it in a Zerg or a heavy condition fight was a quick trip to dead or down state generally) but they gave the Warriors "Healing Signet" access to right as it was brought into the game with the expansion itself.

Surprisingly some of the main complaints against the FB could have been easily taken care of by giving the FB access to Barrier , cut the true healing down but replace it with Barrier which has it's own downside by the fact that healing like effect vanishes in 5 seconds but unfortunately they failed to see this .

Take a look at Brandon Sanderson's The Stormlight Archive series specifically the character Kaladin who is a fantastic example of a guardian type of character and his only weapon is a spear , great read and a great author also .

Note: the link to the wiki for the various books is in my signature below.

> @"frareanselm.1925" said:

> Your argument is more pointless than asking a thief to fight without stealth and teleports... why should a ranger give up his best bet that is kiting???

And to be honest your argument is just as pointless , multiple people have pointed out that it is a prevalent theme of attack by multiple classes and a way to counter those attackers who use range attacks with impunity and that some classes have been using this style of attack since the start of the game and some have been added with the various elite sub classes. Most players are well aware of these type of attacks and adjust their style of fighting to account for these threats.

Multiple people have suggested ways for you to adjust your play style to avoid and counter these type of attacks but your defense of your argument is to totally ignore any of the constructive comments(there are going to be attacks and unconstructive ones this the internet after all) and say that everybody who disagrees with your opinion is just bias and your right and everybody else is just wrong.

I will repeat these sort of attacks are meant to counter the effect classes that can attack from range with impunity some of the classes that do these style of attacks have been doing them since the start of the game some came in with new elites etc...

They are in no way an exploit, you are aware of what happens to a DH that tries to use his pull against a target that has Stability if he doesn't the DH gets yanked to his target.

Please learn the environment you are fighting in , work on your situational awareness while you are fighting, work on ways to gain stability either from yourself or from other player in your party(there is a reason Guardians are always to have Stand Your Ground up in squads in WvW) and if you really want to learn how to counter a class that you have problem with try playing it for awhile then you get understand it's strengths and it's weaknesses along with it's Tell's for its different attacks etc.

Any Ranger that I have run up against in WvW has learned these lessons many times over and it is often a matter of getting your opponent to overextend themselves in a way that plays to your strengths versus their weakness, also you may want to try PvP environment somewhat to help improve flexibility etc.. This is just an honest suggestion you can listen to them or not it is up to you.

With regard to the swap of Toughness to Vitality I seem to remember some discussion about the dev's addressing players concerns about how the intermittent adjustments to the health pool would work out but I can't find the thread, but either way you look at how this plays out in the competitive side it is careless because particularly in a PvP mode you really have nothing in the way of uptime for Quickness. So again here is another example of a "Buff" that is actually a Nerf but in addition they Nerf the healing mantra to balance out for the so called Buff that was actually a nerf , go figure.

Just for clarity the mantras only give 1 sec and 4 sec., the Elite "Feel My Wrath" gives 5 sec, Liberator's Vow and Stalwart Speed both give 2 sec and Swift Scholar only gives 1 1/2 sec(competitive). You might be able to keep uptime going first run through all of you Tomes but once they go on cool down you uptime is going to be short.

> @"Hannelore.8153" said:

> Mantras for healing are in a difficult place as they have no effective cooldown and thus can be used to proc traits like Smiter's Boon and bonuses from Runes on every ICD, so even though it appears weak on some builds it's very powerful.

>

> There's also the fact that the benefits from Quickness are baked into the skill.

The cool down issue was my thoughts also but then I checked the Mesmer's healing mantra and I saw that there wasn't a reduction in it's healing output for competitive(pvp,wvw) and the mesmer's also would benefit from runes(Superior Rune of Flock being particularly helpful) in the same way and again Quickness is also easily accessible for Mesmer so that again doesn't support the reasoning for the amount of the reduction without seeing the some sort of reduction to the Mesmer's healing mantra output which there isn't and pointing to Smiter's Boon is rather mixed being as it has a 20 second cool down and the Vitality gain is only while you have Quickness up so again it's value isn't overwhelming. So overall I'm looking at taking the output from 977 where it was after the big balance patch in Feb and then dropping to 199 in March so there was a loss approximately 80% of it's healing output value. Just curious what anyone else's take on this is.