"Power guardian builds still aren't quite at the level we want them to be in PvE..."

[PogO.5289]

The strongest current power option, DH, got a whopping estimated 2% damage increase. Virtues got nerfed. The WB specific buffs help condi WB more than it does power WB. Condi Firebrand got a mantras rework that is looking like quite a strong buff. Despite explicitly stating one of their goals was to provide support options with might generation, DPS alac WB still has access to zero might without gimping your damage.

 

If 36K DH wasn't a good level before, why would 36.5k DH be any different? This makes 3 patches in a row where they fail to buff power guard to the appropriate level. Going to be 4 or 5 at this rate.

 

p.s. that 36k figure it with extremely grinded weapon stowing. Stowless DH is ~34.5k.

[MagicBot.1570]

I fail to understand how they manage to miss the mark three times in a row... It's really infuriating

[Gehenna.3625]

2 hours ago, MagicBot.1570 said:

I fail to understand how they manage to miss the mark three times in a row... It's really infuriating

Not strictly on topic but I also wonder the same from a WvW point of view.

[Gaiawolf.8261]

8 hours ago, MagicBot.1570 said:

I fail to understand how they manage to miss the mark three times in a row... It's really infuriating

You don't get it, do you? Somewhere out there, somehow, there's a player doing 39K DPS on golem with DH, and they have to keep him in check.

[MagicBot.1570]

1 hour ago, Gaiawolf.8261 said:

You don't get it, do you? Somewhere out there, somehow, there's a player doing 39K DPS on golem with DH, and they have to keep him in check.

True... You're right... I'm sorry

[Forbiben.3842]

Is it missing a mark if it isn't a priority? we have viable dps builds for all 3 specs condi or power doesnt matter. I would love to see Sw/Sw WB but my want isn't always the priority for an entire community.

[MagicBot.1570]

1 hour ago, Forbiben.3842 said:

Is it missing a mark if it isn't a priority? we have viable dps builds for all 3 specs condi or power doesnt matter. I would love to see Sw/Sw WB but my want isn't always the priority for an entire community.

I heard we are due three more Firebrand reworks before we can even begin to consider Willbender as a priority

[Mell.4873]

If you are so concerned with damage why not just play the many Condition Burn builds. The ramp up in damage is about the same as Power builds especially if you consider the trigger time of DH traps. 

[Obtena.7952]

It's a weird 'estimate' to claim the DPS increase is about 2%. This 'estimate' is not inline with the size of the coefficient increases and reduction in CD's that Anet is proposing. 

[Doomdesire.9365]

2 hours ago, Obtena.7952 said:

It's a weird 'estimate' to claim the DPS increase is about 2%. This 'estimate' is not inline with the size of the coefficient increases and reduction in CD's that Anet is proposing. 

This estimate was done using a program that simulates the DH benchmark. It predicted 36.4K for the previous patch which is only ~100DPS shy of the actual bench. The new number is 36.9K, which is just short of 2%. That is consistent with a .1 coefficient buff to GS AAs. Focus coefficient buffs are more significant but sw/fc as a set is still strictly worse than Longbow, ergo, the strongest DH build(not including virtues) will receive a buff of around 2%.

 

 

source: I did one of the current DH benches and worked closely with the guy who made the prediction.

Edited February 6, 2023 by Doomdesire.9365

[Buran.3796]

   Instead I would prefer a usable PvP Firebrand build. WB in PvP is good, DH is decent, core is meh but can be played but Firebrand? Firebrand is easily the worst class at PvP in the whole game, no matter the role you try to push (dps, bruiser, support...).

[Mell.4873]

4 hours ago, Buran.3796 said:

   Instead I would prefer a usable PvP Firebrand build. WB in PvP is good, DH is decent, core is meh but can be played but Firebrand? Firebrand is easily the worst class at PvP in the whole game, no matter the role you try to push (dps, bruiser, support...).

It should really replace Core in terms of sPvP. I guess it gets balanced around WvW.

[Hotride.2187]

Its weird to me how much attention guard gets on average from the devs and there is still complaining. Better that they miss the mark but keep trying, than they miss the mark and don't touch the profession for the next year (of which examples exist for other professions).

Can't play power on guard? Play it on something else. If you want to play guard, you have enough options for what you can do.

[otto.5684]

15 hours ago, Hotride.2187 said:

Its weird to me how much attention guard gets on average from the devs and there is still complaining. Better that they miss the mark but keep trying, than they miss the mark and don't touch the profession for the next year (of which examples exist for other professions).

Can't play power on guard? Play it on something else. If you want to play guard, you have enough options for what you can do.

Actually, this has been the exact opposite. From the 4 classes I mainly follow: guardian, rev, warrior and mesmer, guardian unquestionably got the worst changes.
 

Warrior had SB becoming competitive in pve and support builds got significant improvements. Mesmer had significant buffs to chrono and solid changes to Virtouso. Rev got the lion share of devs attention. Both Vind and Herald have power builds that are viable. And herald also now has a fully viable support build. That is on top of renegade.
 

Guardian? Anet is still kittening around in FB, trying to fix the issues they caused. Power guardian is not viable in pve. WB has significant design issues, and only work as condi dps. How exactly is guardian getting the devs attention is beyond me. In any case, I mostly moved to rev, and honestly, it is currently significantly better. 

[Sagedurk.7358]

18 hours ago, Hotride.2187 said:

Its weird to me how much attention guard gets on average from the devs and there is still complaining. Better that they miss the mark but keep trying, than they miss the mark and don't touch the profession for the next year (of which examples exist for other professions).

Can't play power on guard? Play it on something else. If you want to play guard, you have enough options for what you can do.

I have mained Guardian since I started playing in early 2015, DH since it came out, and since the EoD release, I have mained Willy. I have 3k hours logged on almost exclusively power Guardian

 

If anyone can claim that power Guard (or at least willy) is playable in highend PvE, it's me. Remember the June patch? I kept raiding with power willy with a personal bench of 27k/s, when I benched around 30-31k/s the patch before, I could play it. Alac willy, have played it, despite the design flaws in it. Want to know my proposed fixes for alac willy? Check my post history. I have theorycrafted on heal willy, not a whole lot, but still more than what you can see on SC. I've even made my own handkite willy from scratch and successfully kited hands with it.

 

The thing is not about if it's playable cause it most certainly is, I'd wager that nearly any build can be played. It's about being viable. No, I'm not benching the highest numbers, but I shouldn't be personally benching 27k/s. Take virt and I can EASILY get over 30k/s, I don't even have 300 hours logged on my mesmer, and it's one of my most played classes outside of guardian. When I first benched cVirt, I benched roughly 32k/s with 3 buttons. More than I ever have done on power guardian. 

Just to give you a taste about alac willy: we are forced into 2 GM traits just to share alac, and we require something to hit, on top of that, we barely give any boons.

Heal willy is just a bad choice compared to other builds. Not only does it have to compete against other heal alac builds, but also against hfb. It has troubles upkeeping 25 might.

And HK willy is something I made from scratch just because I wanted to, but for safe HK I still take SpB.

 

If you think guardian has gotten attention, it's very likely to have been firebrand. The ratios of firebrands compared to willys and DHs is so high that people more or less have equated guardian to it. When did they start giving attention to us power guards? After the June patch when we got butchered.

 

Attempt to play all flavors of willy in PvE, as well as the 1 DH build, and then come back and tell us that we have nothing to complain about. Cause it's obvious that you don't play these elite specs

[Blood Red Arachnid.2493]

It would be nice if Anet would actually explain to us what those levels are.  I've been wanting Anet to tell us what their ideal range for high pressure -> realistic -> optimal PVE DPS is for awhile, as well as their reasoning for why some professions currently and/or should do better.  We've all been wondering this for awhile, and their recent philosophy statements were extremely vague on this matter.

I do find it weird how much of the guardian forums are just about firebrand.  I've been expecting a "what is the point to willbender?" thread to pop up for months now, but it seems like players don't care about it enough to launch a complaint.  

Edited March 3, 2023 by Blood Red Arachnid.2493

[Joxer.6024]

On 2/7/2023 at 12:11 AM, Buran.3796 said:

   Instead I would prefer a usable PvP Firebrand build. WB in PvP is good, DH is decent, core is meh but can be played but Firebrand? Firebrand is easily the worst class at PvP in the whole game, no matter the role you try to push (dps, bruiser, support...).

well that answers my post about FB and pvp.....thanks!!!  😉 

[FtoPScrub.5476]

5 hours ago, Blood Red Arachnid.2493 said:

I do find it weird how much of the guardian forums are just about firebrand.  I've been expecting a "what is the point to willbender?" thread to pop up for months now, but it seems like players don't care about it enough to launch a complaint.  

This^. Wingman isn't perfect but with a ratio of nearly 10 FBs per 1 DH it paints a pretty clear picture of the imbalance. This is due to years of Anet disregarding concerns that CFB was overshadowing other specs and that power guard was poorly performing. Most guards have longed transitioned to CFB primarily because performance reasons. They've since finally admitted something was wrong but instead of taking substantive steps they instead

 

A) Choose an overly cautious(and inconsistent relative to other previously underperforming specs) approach to buffing power guard, giving minor coeff increases that have not materialized into putting the spec on par with it's peers.

B) For some reason decide to continue to give CFB buffs that surpass that of power guard

 

They tell us they're noticing people playing condi over power and want to change that, yet their actual changes are clearly reinforcing the idea that you're clearly better off playing CFB. Given that, if you're at all performance inclined, why would you play DH or WB?

 

On Tuesday the patch will go live without any further buffs to power guard, DH will see a marginal and irrelevant increase of ~600 DPS, CFB will see much more, potentially 2K more than current. Power guard will still be taken in only low numbers because it is both weak and because CFB will be busted(given no additional changes). 3 months from now we'll all be huffing that copium that finally the next balance patch will fix power guard, we'll all watch the livestream, see as the devs say with a straight face that power guard is underperforming and that they'll aim to fix it, only for the actual patch notes to read something along the lines of: "increased an autoattack coefficient by .1". Meanwhile power slb, holo, weaver, warrior will be doing more damage using a rotation that doesn't require stows and animation cancelling.

 

 

Edited February 10, 2023 by FtoPScrub.5476

[FtoPScrub.5476]

On 2/10/2023 at 3:08 AM, FtoPScrub.5476 said:

On Tuesday the patch will go live without any further buffs to power guard, DH will see a marginal and irrelevant increase of ~600 DPS, CFB will see much more, potentially 2K more than current. 

 

 

Condi Firebrand benchmarks:

Prepatch:      40,685

Postpatch:    42, 009

Difference:   +1,324

 

Quickness CFB benchmarks:

Prepatch:      34,526

Postpatch:    37,200

Difference:   +2,674

 

Dragonhunter benchmarks:

Prepatch:      36,275

Postpatch:    36,897

Difference:    +622

 

If you're wondering why people play CFB over DH, this is why. If people with spreadsheets can predict the impact of damage buffs in advance, there's no reason Anet devs can't.

 

 

Edited March 2, 2023 by FtoPScrub.5476

[zealex.9410]

Its extremely funny to me that gs2 lost the slow sooner than lb2 lost the root, also they didnt need to increase lb2 cd.

[draxynnic.3719]

On 2/9/2023 at 6:51 PM, Sagedurk.7358 said:

 

If you think guardian has gotten attention, it's very likely to have been firebrand. The ratios of firebrands compared to willys and DHs is so high that people more or less have equated guardian to it. When did they start giving attention to us power guards? After the June patch when we got butchered.

 

Attempt to play all flavors of willy in PvE, as well as the 1 DH build, and then come back and tell us that we have nothing to complain about. Cause it's obvious that you don't play these elite specs

Pretty much this. The 'golden haired child' meme really only applies to firebrand. Only time non-firebrand guardians have really been considered strong in PvE was when speedrunners were able to skip having a dedicated quickness provider by stacking dragonhunters with Feel My Wrath, but that was not reflective of most groups and the balance team terminated that years ago.

Ironically, it actually enhances the perception because it makes firebrand look really dominant in fractals. While there is a degree to which firebrand genuinely does have good tools for the fractal environment, a large part of it is also that fractals make it more awkward than other content to swap characters. So anyone who fractals with a guardian has no incentive to swap to anything other than a firebrand. Group needs quickness? Firebrand. Group needs heals? Firebrand. Group needs DPS? Firebrand. Group needs alacrity? That's a job for someone else.

Other professions, though, have more incentive to switch between elite specialisations depending on what the group needs, so no one spec looks that dominant. While outside of fractals, guardian players can more easily sub in something else if quickness is already covered, which is why firebrand has a lower play rate outside of fractals.

[Eekasqueak.7850]

Fractals also kinda make it so most players stick with one class because if how agony resist works. 

[zealex.9410]

Imo the ways they should buff dh are the following:

Revert the cd increase on lb2, replace the root with 50% movement and buff lb aa, buff possecion of blades and buff bgh slightly or decrease its cast time, reduce the aftercast on gs 3, 4 and 5 especially 4 by a bunch. These likely wont push dh to 40k but they are largely qol buffs aimed at making dh slightly easier to do high benchmark numbers without extensive stowing and make lb feel better.

Edited March 4, 2023 by zealex.9410

[draxynnic.3719]

On 3/3/2023 at 4:59 PM, Eekasqueak.7850 said:

Fractals also kinda make it so most players stick with one class because if how agony resist works. 

Agony resistance and potions needing to be swapped between characters if you don't invest shared inventory slots.