Falseprophet.1502

You have a good point but, they did talk about exploring ways to improve LB later down the road (50% movement reduction to True Shot rather than a root), but it went back to the drawing board. DH probably will see a bit more than a 800 dps increase due to the modifiers of the spec. Hammer may be decent on DH to align with the burst window. But, Willbender won't likely benefit much from these changes because of how dependent it is on Restorative Virtues. We're heading back to the pre-2017 days, boys.

Yes, you really are. Your post is just pure misinformation. Scepter was nerfed years ago and Arenanet specifically came out saying that "scepter SHOULD NOT be a top melee weapon." It hasn't been buffed since. This is the same patched that buffed Zealot's Defense to put Sword ahead of Scepter. You can even run longbow/greatsword and get better numbers than scepter/focus/greatsword. Prove me wrong. Show me your logs of a scepter/focus parsing better than a sword/focus. Show me these "top players" you play with!

Power Willbender needs some love and it is a shame that it has been excluded from this. Offhand sword is terrible. The power build is already worse than Dragonhunter and is SOLELY built around Restorative Virtues. If you don't spec that trait, it's even worse. Close this gap by making offhand sword create dual skills with your main hand three skill. It will allow you to tweak numbers without powercreeping Condi Willbender.

Uhhh? Power Willbender is in just as bad of shape as Dragonhunter and got absolutely no acknowledgement. What about Scepter? Maybe we just have to hope for the October balance patch for these things to get addressed?

You are simply wrong. It's the other way around. Scepter is not used in any power build. Scepter is significantly worse than sword. Power WB is junk and for them to completely neglect it on 8/23 is really alarming.

The purpose of me bringing this up for conversation is to create a clear dichotomy between each Guardian elite specialization. Willbender's only flavor is movement. Core Guardian is antithetical to this, leaving a lot of the core kit to be desired when playing Willbender, Zealot's Defense is being one of them. I'm not asking to for the root to be removed. I'm asking for the skill to be completely redesigned for the Willbender spec. It's hard to argue, even when you're not a Guardian main, that Chains of Light, Protector's Strike, or Zealot's Defense actually contribute to this specialization in a positive or fun way. Leaving these weapons as is, further discourages build diversity and the differentiation between Willbender and core Guardian. What I would like to see with an offhand sword equipped - these are incredibly rough ideas. This is strictly my opinion on how to make Willbender more fun and engaging in all game modes. Zealot's Defense becomes a dual whirl attack, three stacks of vulnerability if both attacks hit. Projectile block is now removed. Chains of Light becomes a channeled beam skill with a 1 1/2 cast, 900 range, 6x attacks, burn is applied if all six attacks hit. Immobilization is removed. -or- this can operate as another flip skill, a 600-900 range port in, a strike, then the second flip can teleport back to original position. The theory would to port in, dump sword skills, get a couple scepter AA autos in (lol @ scepter auto attack pathing) and port out. Protector's Strike becomes a flip skill. Aegis and Protection upon successful block is removed, instead, the first skill is a single strike hits the target and applies vulnerability. The second activation of the second skill dazes if the target is above the vulnerability threshold, quickness if the target is not above the vulnerability threshold.

I still really believe in this idea and deserves consideration. If thoughtfully designed, it would: Bring up Zealot's Defense to today's design standards Introduce scepter and mace into the kit and make offhand sword a little more desirable in PvE. Allow for a better flow and synergy with the overall elite spec

About a year to year and a half, DH had a really cohesive rotation where cool downs lined up well with spear, Procession of Blades, or could easily swap to signet share. Within that year or so, we saw that rotation just become so much less fluid and just awful to play due to the following changes: What happened? Scepter has been gutted for power (because Arenanet stated that previously that a ranged weapon should be the best weapon up close, this now seems contradictory in this patch). Procession of Blades received cooldown and damage tweaks throwing off the alignment of other CDs Greatsword symbol received cooldown and damage tweaks throwing off the alignment of other CDs Defender's Dogma nerfed (this wasn't too bad but it helped when you could game it during certain encounters to bring F1 off CD) Signet share was changed to no longer be stackable and now removed Two side notes: "But Unscathed Contender????" To rely on 100% aegis is ridiculous and unrealistic for mostly everything in this game. A spec shouldn't be competitive based off the design of a gimmicky trait. Power Willbender feels like it suffers from similar issues, too. Good luck using offhand sword and be competitive. As someone who could always get to 90th percentile of SC benches, I can't even break 27k with my DH now. I'm pretty concerned that the next balance patch is three months away and I am not very optimistic that DH or several guardian weapons will be overhauled to the like of engineer's rifle. Doubly concerned because there will be droves of people along with their blue class pitchforks, too.

Or you can familiarize yourself with the skills Guardian has... Symbol of Blades, queue up Advancing Strike right before Judge's Intervention, easy 2500 range...

Nerfing this rune won't make people flock to Willbender. Let's use some common sense and deductive reasoning as to why Willbender isn't good in competitive areas. Also, let's talk about how one spec is contingent upon one rune, that's good design, huh?

Another patch, another day where core guard is completely contradictory to Willbender's design.

You're further proving my point of cherrypicking. You're bringing up something completely tangential to try to fit your weird narrative whilst clamoring to avoid being wrong. We're not talking about fury. We're talking about aegis uptime and how you believe hammer is a strong AA weapon while citing a video of experienced raiders who used it to provide protection, vulnerability, and healing. Not because it was a weapon with the "highest autoattacks." Go read their Reddit post. Quit being so righteous and wrong. It's a forum. But I'm done. Like I previously stated, your perception is your reality.

This is cherrypicking at its finest. Your comment regarding Unscathed Contender to attempt to make your point, epitomizes everything that is wrong with guardian. It's too reliant on traits that rely on other classes providing boons to make it better. You would only ever take Unscathed Contender if you had a Boon DD on Adina for the Detonate Plasma. This is often the case for 100% resolution uptime, too. Try playing a virtues DH while maintaining 100% Aegis and Resolution without a comp that caters to your build. I promise your DPS would be terrible. Regarding Dhuum and hammer AA's comment about being one of the highest autoattacks, go look at that log. Mirages were 6-7k higher than any Hammer Guard on that kill. They brought the Guards for the Writ of Persistence heal and the protection. Your perception is your reality.

Why aren't people causing a bigger stink about the tier three service chips? The third tier is gated by completely RNG system. People loved to complain about the turtle's inaccessibility but at least it was guaranteed upon success whereas these tier three chips are not. Out of the 330,000 accounts registered on GW2Efficiency, only 0.6% (roughly 2400 people) of the population have unlocked the 'High Tier' achievement. Voice in the Void, arguably one of the hardest raid titles to get, has about five thousand more people with that title than those who have a tier three service chip.

That 40K Power Willbender bench is incredibly unrealistic. Willbender does not have any passive Aegis. That build relies on 100% Aegis uptime to reach that number due to Unscathed Contender. I don't think there is a single comp out there that will have 100% Aegis uptime, LOL

THANK YOU. Forums are a cesspool of something else.

Being one week in, playing a power Willbender feels so incredibly stale, uninspired, and completely behind the condition variant. The offhand sword really needs to transform the main hand weapon's third skill into something that allows for much better synergy for the profession. The main hand sword's root on Zealot's Defense is antithetical to the design of Willbender, Scepter's Chains of Light is useless, and Mace's Protector's Strike leaves little reason to be desired in the kit.

buuuuuuuuuuuuuuuump

To echo and build off what I mentioned months ago in this thread: Off hand sword needs more damage and needs to change your main hand three skill similar to Thief or Weaver's dual attack (come on Arenanet, this is three skills only). This will give the opportunity (if executed well) to better align the core weapons to Willbender for better flow and synergy. Examples with OH sword equipped: Scepter 3 - dash forward, attack your foe, gain resistance and immobilize based off successful hit Mace 3 - No longer channel, instead, attack your foe in a radius (similar to warrior axe 2) and if more than two enemies were struck, gain Aegis Sword 3 - NO LONGER ROOTS YOU Willbender Flames need to pulse around your characters. @Arken.3725 suggested they act similar to Torch 4's initial pulse, which would feel a lot better It would be nice to see some sort of tradeoff change where Willbender Flames become homogenized with symbols for this spec. Lethal Tempo needs to last longer and improve the power damage of Willbender Flames Or Power for Power needs to be upped. Virtues need a reduced base cooldown. Crashing Courage did not have damage upon impact. This damage needs to be on par or exceed the damage of F1. The utilities still seem underwhelming in what they do.

I don't know if this has been stated yet but patch notes state "Crashing Courage: This ability now delivers a five-target area attack on impact, in addition to setting the Willbender Flames." This isn't occurring for me at all

This post is so profoundly dumb and I have no idea why people are even postulating here. To throw a fit about guardian getting alacrity whilst being forced to two TWO TRAIT LINES (Virtues and Willbender) for five man alacrity, is silly. CMC also stated that this probably wouldn't even be enough to even warrant taking in most cases and if you even have played a couple hours of end game guardian PvE, you know that he's probably correct.

Can we please get the Dark Matter Cape in Statuettes or the Gem Store, please? It's been almost nine months since we've last seen it!

What if we lost pet swap and whenever we toggle Unleashed it works this way: Unleash Pet: both of your equipped pets are now out. The weird clunky Unleash Pet skills are no longer a thing, where we get additional access to the second pet's skills. Unleash Ranger: damage is increased for the ranger. Vow of the Untamed now increases damage from (15% > 25%) Thoughts?

This spec is very incomplete and it shows. Pets need a baseline buff. Druid reduces damage on pets, Untamed should buff it. ArenaNet needs to fix the boon application on pets. From a PvE perspective -- hammer does not do enough damage Hammer's range should be increased to 220. It feels impossible to land anything in competitive modes Unleashed needs to affect all core weapons Integrate more damage in the utilities. Forest Fortification could increase damage additionally as core anger doesn't have any dps elites Traits aren't cohesive. They lack clearly defined power or condi. Unleashed pet skills won't be used much in PvE Unable to call back pet without clicking now

I really like this symbol idea. Update these symbols, adjust power coefficients, remove the animation lock from the virtues, make willbender flames be a PBAOE, and OH sword changes your main hand's third ability (like weaver dual attack or thief), and I think you will have a good and really decent elite spec.