Saiyan.1704

I kind of agree with this. The people on our team that we WANT them to alter their builds, simply wont do it anyways. And half the time players in unranked are on a bad core class to begin with. So the people who would get the most benefit out of this change would be vet players who knows how big of a difference a single trait change can make, let alone multiple trait changes. That said I wouldn't mind a SINGLE trait change + one weapon change after the 3rd death...and only once per game. That would make things interesting mid game, IMO... but Anet would never incorporate something like this.

My biggest issue with the homing flying tooth of death is... it is an AoE skill that can hit multiple targets, all of which may not know where their party members may end up when it is casted. So I could get hit by a flying tooth of death simply because my thief ally decided to shadowstep next to me from behind. Then WHAM we both get hit. As a Guardian main I've done this towards my ally's without realizing it. The AoE hit should be lower radius imo. That's my only issue with it. It is otherwise no different than Ray of Judgement on Focus#3 that us Guards have.

Wanted to make a PSA on the top... 1. 2. 3... X.Y. Z.. Guardian builds in PvP - Every build has Pros and Cons depending on team comp and/2v2/3v3/XvX/ matchups. There isn't a #1 build.. per se... Core Power (and variants) Disclaimer: This build will depend on Your Playstyle but the more consistently rewarding build has been Zeal/Virtues/Radiance with Marauders and Soldier rune, utilizing 'Advance' shout utility. Typically this build uses GS with Scepter/Focus for range + defense when needed. Utilities can be changed depending whether you need AoE damages (spirit sword), stun breaks such as [JI, CoP, SYG] etc. Marauder makes the build feel like old-school Willbender, delivering crazy damages with GS#3. Other build options consists of multiple sigils on the utility bar for self sustaining/team oriented purposes depending on comfortable playstyle. Reason it works: Core > WB in 1v1s - The reason it works is because it offers quicker access to immediate healing with F2 along with immediate block/stunbreak of F3, all the while using the 'Advance' for additional AoE blocks. This allows GS#3 to be as successful as it is hitting a staggering 5k to 7k damage per hit. With Marauders the increase health pool will often out sustain Willbenders in 1v1's. A lot of this has to do with damage mitigation and opportunities to successfully land GS skills against low health pool players. Willbender Zeal Bursts (use Scholar runes) Disclaimer: You will die.. a lot.. if you're not accustomed to a quick triggering build that requires map awareness and overall mechanical proficiency.. That said, this build is the MOST damaging AoE burst spec in sPvP at the moment. It's 11k healthpool is extremely low but it straight up carries any normal ranked/unranked game when climbing the ladder due to it's single target - or multi target - burst prowess potential. Utility items can be altered depending on playstyle but generally Whirling Light and Judges Intervention is an absolute must, along side a secondary stunbreak like CoP or SYG to maintain pressure or escapage. It certainly does hit dead-ends when going against anything heavy condi or anything that is an exclusive 1v1 side-noding duelist. It is a +1 build that should be treated as such. Reason it works: WB offers some of the most extreme on-point damages in the game, dealing damages to multiple targets at once. You'll gain value if you're able to dish out tons of damage enabling your team to clean house. Dragonhunder CC Zealer (edited: Jan/2023) - Soldier runes or Scholar runes, (your choice) Disclaimer: This is the middle-man between Core Guard and Willbender. When against heavy condi comps this build will self sustain better with its cleanse on block and occasional CC. It takes the core guard GS damage but adds medium/long range LB DH damage, stength of both worlds. Wrathful Spirit means you will have 100% crit chance. You lose Virtues Stunbreak + Stability but gain a plethora (this is a big word) of Aegis blocks with Hunter's Determination, Fragments of Faiths, top it off with "Advance", when needed. Because you don't cast symbols all too often, Mystic Rebuke (shattered aegis) is taken over Symbolic Avenger edit: there may be some errors on the builds because I was really drunk when making this post.. but if anyone have questions feel free to hit me up. edit: I sobered up...

I feel this 100%. It's not that I can't dish out enough damage in team fights... it's just that WB is so glass that if you sneeze in my direction, I go down lol. To prove your point further, GS Zerk WB can't be a thing due to how glass WB is by nature... I find sword/scepter zeal zerks eons more efficient than GS WB zerk/marauders at the moment but Core guards eat me like candy in teamfights rn. As for Core vs WB, you're right yet again..... I can't freakin' hit anything rofl. WB is designed to dish out as much damage as possible but that build negates a lot of damage.... and Core somehow manages to land more GS hits than I'd like to admit it does, even when i'm sword/scepter. I can't really wrap my head around it (or maybe i'm just bad idk). If i play really well by surviving, then i'll outdamage core by a lot to the point some one is going down but surviving has been a huge challenge for zerk WB rn. I'm not going to jump ship though. Nearly hit top 25 with WB until i got dishonor and derped... I'm glad Core guard is getting love rn though. Seeing a lot of core guards do well in sPvP.

I like the concept and welcome any and every Guard build posted here because it does something to my nether regions... By bunker buster, do you mean taking down bunker builds as fast as possible? I feel Zeal/Radiance Zerker Yolo WB build does that slightly better. But I certainly can see what this build offers though. It's different.

(sPvP) Every Page that is 3/4 cast time... remove it. Just remove it.

WB virtues will only proc their effects only when the virtue is activated. Activating F1 > F1 goes on CD > you will proc burning every 5th attack for a very short duration - or every 3rd attack if Permeating Wrath trait is selected. Unfortunately it does not cast burning on every hit. The only trait that can do that is Searing Pact, when ever some one stays inside the flames. If you're thinking to yourself, "wow this is a garbage way to deal condi damage", that's because it is. WB (sPvP) is really bad for dishing out condi-anything. Right now WB is best useful as full glass dps. That said I don't play PvE so i don't have any stats...

When I played FB back when it was meta for like... a week.. I chose it because you could immediately cast CC, F1 #3 and F3 #2. This was back when using FB was actually considered a decently higher skillcap class in comparison to an Engi simply because you can target people when immediately entering tombs (when cast times was shorter and quickness was higher so immediately casting F1 #3 felt rewarding to use). If we don't use Mantras and we wont, all we can do is cast Tomb CC every 10 seconds. Firebrand will still be incapable of self-sustaining itself better than Core....nerfing the FB Mantras was the biggest nail in the coffin for FB in sPvP.

I think Anet intented on Scepter's increased hit rate to be a "condi" weapon of it's own. They changed it to hit 8 random targets above symbol, then 5 hits of the symbol itself when...prior to the change... scepter #2 was just a simple symbol cast. Scepter/X + Sword/X has always been the superior F1 Burn Proc weapons of choice in WvW and PvP. To add.. DH has always been the most superior burn spec build available... Firebrand was/is a TERRIBLE burn build option. I can't recall FB ever being a burn build option actually... when it came to wvw or competitive sPvP. Edit: Sage amulet was a thing but a very niche thing.... come to think of it.

I haven't tested AH but you definitely get boons when these Aegis duration stacks end. So that's 2 boon gains every... idk 3 or so seconds, depending on the (not so obvious) aegis boon activations from F3. So technically yes BUT if you get hit just once, then your entire Aegis boon ends. The aegis F3 boon trigger will restart. The thing is, I absolutely LOVE this hidden mechanic. So much that it kind of adds a build diversity to WB when using Zeal. If you can maintain an upkeep of Fury + Resolution (60% crit) then we can alter our builds a bit further.... albeit sacrificing utility from Virtues... it's still an awesome option that Zeal can add, imo.

This has been out since EoD so no doubt many guards are aware of it... it was just finally bothering me enough for me to ask (I don't recall seeing a post about it) Trait: Wrathful Spirit in Zeal tree. "Aegis grants boons when it ends" - Fury and Resolution F3: Crashing Courage - "Every five hits gives Aegis" When you deal several F3 activations, you will have a long duration Aegis boon on you. BUT you low-key have stacks of Aegis boons, even though it doesn't actually show it. Resulting in Fury + Resolution procs from Wrathful Spirit every time an Aegis boon ends. Mechanically it's confusing... because no matter the stacked Aegis or duration, it just blocks a single hit and the Aegis boon ends. But when you are not hit, you gain multiple boons of the Wrathful Spirit trait because these boons of Aegis are ending due to their individual boon timers. (is there an official post about this??) Btw Anet... PLEASE make this a feature if it's a bug. Zeal treeline needs love.

Pros: Having to enter combat to immediately CC with F1:#3 and F3:#2 will be a nice QoL feel to it especially since both are on a 10s cooldown. This aspect of FB wont feel clunky. It will feel closer to the OG Firebrand build on release of PoF. (SPvP will benefit most from this change while PvE & WvW will get hit harder) Cons: Upon patch release page cast times and page consumption on certain skills will overall cripple FB in PvE & WvW instead of sPvP . The current ability of having 5+ pages available to cast in F3, then freely going to any other tomb to cast 5+ more pages, is what made FB strong. But a downtime of 8s+ of minimal page casting will really hurt a lot (if not all) FB builds in these two game modes. The change will certainly be a more skillful and reactive style of FB play that I approve of. Higher skillcap isn't a bad thing, but it's going to be a bumpy road for FB when the initial patch releases.... i'm all for the change in meta though :3

I'm calling it, we're getting a change to Torch. *crosses fingers*

Our other elite specs doesn't give you the opportunity to be vulnerable during it's channeling time. The chances of us dying while using this elite is too darn high (meme reference). As I said before, if it had a 1200 range instead of 600, then maybe it would be a snipe-worthy CC option instead of the defensive Renewed Focus option.

I want to actually land Torch#4 instead of seeing my Norn yeet it 100 kilometers in the opposite direction because he saw the person take a side step... it's the biggest meme lol. Let's fix what's really broken.

Then idk why there are not any threads about wanting Heaven's Palm changed. I just assumed people liked it in PvE so Anet said, "yeah it fine fam". Even in WvW players prefer a different elite. It would be a different story if the elite did excellent in 1v1 engagements but it doesn't even do that very well at all...Rev's Harold elite is iconic. It's a little sad WB's elite isn't.

Our "Report player" system doesn't have the same effect as it does in other games such as Overwatch. Even Overwatch has a 10m+ Dishonor system if you miss a single queue, which I originally thought was intense because gw2 dishonor is only 2.3 minutes in comparison, then only around 7m after a second offense. Players have had better experiences with the Submit Ticket system om this website where you can report a player yourself. Posting screenshots of that player's toxicity helps too. I have given a person dishonor before that way.

I can't imagine Heaven's Palm being more useful in WvW than sPvP.. so i included that in the title... The elite is so bad it's difficult to know where to start.... You are vulnerable while in the air, receiving damage while susceptible to CC during that 1.25s duration The range of 600 radius means you're not surprising anyone especially with the casting time involved... it's almost always used in melee range (see below) The knockdown hit radius is only 240, so there's a high chance of falling short of the 600 radius range hitting no one because there's no range measurement (like Scepter#2) The only thing Good about the elite is the 20s cast time... which leads to believe that it's meant as a gap closer while also supplying CC throughout combat... except the CC never lands due to the knockback proc radius and while also being so darn vulnerable during its channel. If Renewed Focus offers a 3s invulnerability downtime during its channel to restore Virtues.. then Heaven's Palm should... at the very least... offer 1.25 seconds worth of evade/invulnerability. If that's not an option then its hit radius should be improved OR its range should be increased. Let's compare the elite to another non-meta elite that's better than Heaven's Palm.... Dragon Hunter's Dragon's Maw elite. Traited correctly (trap runes) it gives Stealth + Superspeed when casted. This alone is enough to get away from battle for a few seconds (while kiting) thanks to Superspeed. Even if you don't gain value with its CC potential, at least you can run away if needed. You don't have that option with Heaven's Palm. It is a hit-or-miss that does not offer ANY self-sustain opportunities at all especially during channeling time. The only other elite to compare Heaven's Palm to is Rev's Chaotic Release elite that gives a knockback proc of 450 radius, almost doubling that of Heaven's Palm....and with a cast time of 3/4s. The odds of hitting a single person with it is so much greater than Heaven's Palm.

If Firebrand was bad in WvW then Anet would finally give it buffs in sPvP instead of the craptastic state it has been in since HoT. Every single WvW nerf has effected FB in sPvP, even when the spec was already considered trash tier... it's laughable.

I'll agree that WB is (what's lower than trash tier?) pretty bad in sPvP but DH isn't outclassed by almost everyone... for starters condi DH soft counters engi while so many other classes have issues engaging engi. I only play condi or condi hybrid DH and I do pretty decently as a solo player. Nearly Plat every season which isn't bad considering I am mostly a soloQ player.

(agree) I've been curious about medi vs AH... I tried both a few days ago and found AH having better sustains, especially in 1v1 fights compared to medi. But all that said, it's worse in teamfights. Burst healing vs healing over time with AH is apparent when you don't have to rely on Virtues or Staff/Elite to heal up. And facetanking damage while using Staff#4 or Signet of Courage is certainly a bad idea-- AH has greater failure in teamfights when being focused down compared to medis. I really love Signet of Resolve, it's actually one of our best heals when it's traited. 8.1k heal on a 28s cd while always cleansing 1 condi every 4s is nuts but like you said, it's hard to pass up a free 40% crit trait. And with a higher chance of facetanking our AH healing abilities I can see why you and many other guards would lean towards medi's. EDIT: actually i'm gonna play with your medi build but with Litany of Wrath heal... it'll probably be rubbish but I want to see something.

I don't have an issue with people who quit... but I have a Huge issue with people who quit after the first mid wipe, and/or when the enemy team has 100 more points than you. It's simply exhilarating making a comeback in Conquest when the enemy team think they're about to win.. It's why I NEVER quit during a ranked match... Even if it's a for sure loss, I'm there to hit things. It is too boring to just stand around.

To the above build: I need to see how it does vs a competent GG team who has 3 burst+cc classes focusing it down. It's going to depend on whether the build can last long enough to give value to my team in mid engagements (ranked sPvP, not AT's). It can already hold its own on side-nodes but I haven't faced good cata's nor good spellbreakers yet... it doesn't die to rangers/bs/dh. @Hogwarts Zebra.8597let me know what you think of it if you get a chance to play with the build.

I wasn't about to make a 3rd thread buuuut I have another fun build for people to mess with. WB AH Bruiser I've seen a few guards run thish sigil self-sustain build before (even using staff like how I am) and tbh I was offered a similiar build a couple months ago. This build feels a whole lot stronger. I may even post a video of it later when I get a chance and i'll explain more. (EDIT: fixed link to show Amulet and Runes)

WB still sucks.