Loathing Guardian Spear

[Tearthy Flame.1463]

I'm keeping this post very short and spoiler free, I may add an edit later on if I have more thoughts beyond the opinions I've had downvoted on reddit and somewhat liked on the GW2 Forums. You as a player can like or dislike the weapon, it's fine to feel however you will.

ArenaNet, Spear makes for a horrible healing weapon, a horrible DPS weapon, a terrible weapon overall with an ill conceived and rushed design making it have severe flaws at the core design of the skills. There's no combo flow and every skill feels terrible to play together and combo together, basically press skill 5 to make your skills mean anything and then wait forever to do anything useful again.

Currently, the healing is buggy on Guardian Spear, Auto Attack heals downed ally's and skill 4 doesn't heal. I don't mind bugs really, they can be fixed with effort. What I have an issue with is the rushed development of Guardian Spear like it was the last weapon they worked on.

Last I'll say is, play Guardian Spear, then really think about how useful this weapon is compared to other Guardian Weapons. Tell me, does it have better support than Staff, better DPS than Hammer? We all know it's at least better than Scepter, but that's a low bar.

I loath the Guardian Spear for being a terrible weapon . . . and that makes me really disappointed and sad, 'cause I don't want to use this new weapon which is a major milestone in GW2... *Sigh.

Thanks for reading.

P.S. All I ask for is a complete scrap and overhaul of this weapon to make it a weapon with an Auto Attack that's Ranged at far and Melee up close and I think the rest will fall into place.

[Supernova Starr.2069]

You'd thought a lapdog content creator who's main is Ele, would be simping to where all the design resources went for this patch: Ele spear.

Instead he's playing spear support firebrand in open world (clearly said content creator is working on an agenda pushed by anet to hide the hideous design this weapon has) 

Easy to tell the battle to make this weapon useful for guardian outside it's only viable niche (not support fb) was a lost since the beginning

Not only they actively made the weapon goofier they also choose to not address the 1000 issues pointed out on beta topic

Edited August 21 by Supernova Starr.2069

[ArcanistSeven.8720]

9 hours ago, Supernova Starr.2069 said:

(clearly said content creator is working on an agenda pushed by anet to hide the hideous design this weapon has) 

 

bro i think its time to go outside and put the game down.

[Ezrael.6859]

Solar Storm only heals when it removes conditions. 

[Ferus.3165]

7 hours ago, Ezrael.6859 said:

Solar Storm only heals when it removes conditions. 

which is honestly pretty shite. The skill has a pretty lengthy cast time already and then the heal is still conditional on top? You will practically never use this skill for the heal because of that. It's just a random effect that sometimes is there and sometimes isn't. I mean it is still better than nothing but i'd rather have something that would do a bit more than having the chance to heal you for a fraction of a single autoattack every 20 seconds.

[Perihen the Thawk.9527]

I still don't really get the illumination thing. Everything illuminates everything else so what's the point?

Maybe people can use it in WvW or whatever, but it feels really lame in open world. I don't really mind weapons having niches, but I do want to play through the new zones with the new weapon lol.

[Makion.3457]

Sadly as a Guardian main I have to agree with this post, Spear feels like crap, hate spear 1 and 2 skills, feels clunky and slow, no good damage and a worst healer option in all the weapon set.  I think Im playing Janthir on my Ele, those are fun skills to use. 

I was wrong, the Spear is quite fun in pve, need to try it in fractals for a better look at it.  (Well except skill 2 that could be a teleport instead of a dash)

Edited August 26 by Makion.3457

[Tearthy Flame.1463]

@makion

I'm not happy about making this post either. Briefly today I checked out other spears on all professions, some of my guildies say they're not a fan of a particular spear- yet that's leaning towards a personal preference or not knowing how to build for that weapon (yet). Thematically the spears are beautiful and the Art Team did amazing on them, the skills have a focused role and any problems with them can be balanced out with patches. I would say overall the majority of spears are in a playable state yet will need some work and I'm sure they'll be buffed or nerfed over time.

Picking the spear I've played with, I like the Revenant Spear a lot, I think the combination of skill usages makes a lot of sense and it flows beautifully between Melee and Short Ranged (600) combat. If feels very good if you know how to use it, building it with a Quickness DPS build in mind is also really fun. ---The only thing that soured my enjoyment of these weapons was my overwhelming envy and jealousy; I still feel like crying about it, at least inside. Guardian mind as well have not gotten a spear at all, major updates to Scepter Skills would've made my day.

I have to say it for what it is: Guardian Spear is a Failure. I don't know if it was rushed development time, or other spears took a bigger piece of the pie and Guardian got crust. The Skills are flawed and under developed with very bad ideas, the Art is over shadowed by all the other Spears and has a lot of yellow and very intricate/busy patterns, animation speed doesn't have weight they're all very fast.

The general flow of combat as you said "Spear feels like crap," pressing Skill 5 (Symbol) and then popping off all your other skills doesn't feel like a satisfying combination of Rotation or Situational Combat. Skill 5 also doesn't give a crap about affecting your Auto Attack; why have a mechanic for making your skills "Stronger" if there's no rewarding gameplay for building up a special buff's duration that'll affect how you play Spear. Skill 5 is still a 0 distance launch CC, not a knock down... The visual of AA still lags behind and into your character as you move- at least on Charr, the original Staff AA had the Fan attack figured out 12-13 years ago... I'm baffled, I think the only major changes were to the Visuals of Guardian Spear which aren't any better than back in Beta which was weeks ago...

TL;DR:
I'm sorry this reply got very long, I'm at least glad there's some people that are realizing the terrible flaws of Guardian's Spear weapon and I wish we had different problems. The ideas for this weapon are severely scatter brained and has nothing of value to offer- gameplay wise. I wish it was more alike Revenant Spear having Melee and Ranged AA and other skills.

Thanks for reading.

[yLoon.5289]

Well, that is what we all get when there are no subscription fees in this game.🤷‍♂️
The way we hold the spear with one hand is quite stupid too. (despite it is a 2h weapon) 

Edited August 22 by yLoon.5289

[Saiyan.1704]

19 minutes ago, yLoon.5289 said:

The way we hold the spear with one hand is quite stupid too. (despite it is a 2h weapon) 

Once you realize that the spear animation when holding it is just the underwater animation... that shows your shoulders and arms floating... you can't unsee it.

jdawg, another guardian player pointed that out to me and now I'm annoyed about just how bad the spear animation really is. Could they really not make a whole new animation when holding the spear?

[quaniesan.8497]

There isn't just a  place for spear in any build you run, except maybe some use in WvW (and  you know how fine WvW is nowadays).   Its identity is all over the place. In no universe you would put this thing in power dps, condiDps, adps.  It hits like wet noodle and doesn't have the level of multi-hit skill to trigger burn and alac as efficiently as other weapons.  Its heal is mediocre at best and never to be compete with staff.  Its symbol has too long of CD. its Spear 2 is slow and constantly displaces you, spear 4 just ...misses things unless you are in a spaghetti dish of enemies. Seems like I just repeated things people had listed before, but quite undeniable that it's just impossible to find a slot for spear as primary or competing weapon vs. existing options. 

Edited August 22 by quaniesan.8497

[Nelict.7589]

I am so disappointed with the Guardian's spear. Maybe it has some uses in WvW, but outside WvW it's completely useless. As for PvE, Is it viable for condi builds? No. Power builds? No. How about healing support builds? NO! Staff and x/shield are way, way better probably in every scenario.

I am sorry Anet devs who, I am sure you worked hard for that, but Guardian's spear skills are utterly trash. 

[draxynnic.3719]

Going to go against the grain here, and it's not flawless... but it is fun, in the circumstances that are suitable for it.

And that's the thing. Guardian already had good weapons for the more conventional functions. Spear is a dedicated mass combat weapon - if you're looking to just kill one boss or player there are better options, but in those situations normally seen in WvW or open world that can be succinctly described as "target-rich environments", it shines.

[Supernova Starr.2069]

5 minutes ago, draxynnic.3719 said:

Spear is a dedicated mass combat weapon - if you're looking to just kill one boss or player there are better options, but in those situations normally seen in WvW or open world that can be succinctly described as "target-rich environments", it shines.

GS (and hammer if you wanna meme) already does this job and in better ways

[Supernova Starr.2069]

5 hours ago, Tearthy Flame.1463 said:

The general flow of combat as you said "Spear feels like crap," pressing Skill 5 (Symbol) and then popping off all your other skills doesn't feel like a satisfying combination of Rotation or Situational Combat. Skill 5 also doesn't give a crap about affecting your Auto Attack; why have a mechanic for making your skills "Stronger" if there's no rewarding gameplay for building up a special buff's duration that'll affect how you play Spear. Skill 5 is still a 0 distance launch CC, not a knock down... The visual of AA still lags behind and into your character as you move- at least on Charr, the original Staff AA had the Fan attack figured out 12-13 years ago... I'm baffled, I think the only major changes were to the Visuals of Guardian Spear which aren't any better than back in Beta which was weeks ago...

There were consensus around these on Beta Spear topic, and yet they weren't unable to adress.

Symbols are one of the biggest parts of power and healing builds and a weapon with 20 sec cooldown on it, is very far off to say the least

Whoever designed Guardian Spear set: A) never played guardian or B) plays a "fun open world build"

Edited August 22 by Supernova Starr.2069

[draxynnic.3719]

11 minutes ago, Supernova Starr.2069 said:

GS (and hammer if you wanna meme) already does this job and in better ways

Only in the sense that they're melee cleaving weapons. Spear is close range, but it's still more of a flamethrower style, which has its benefits in certain environments.

If you don't like it, that's your prerogative, but I think they were basically trying to make release staff but actually committing rather than being a weird hybrid of flamethrower-style and long-range poke weapon, and they succeeded. It's not a raid weapon, but guardian already has its raiding needs covered (although pistol still has major issues). Similar for 1v1 PvE. So instead of just making a greatsword or longbow replacement, they made something that's genuinely different.

There are issues, as there almost always are, but they're not fundamental bad design issues.

Edited August 22 by draxynnic.3719

[Supernova Starr.2069]

2 minutes ago, draxynnic.3719 said:

If you don't like it, that's your prerogative

Saying stuff like this won't make this weapon better, sure, it has it's niche use (which again, is not support fb, their intended design), but once the novelty wear off, this weapon will rotten around mace, scepter and hammer.

5 minutes ago, draxynnic.3719 said:

So instead of just making a greatsword or longbow replacement, they made something that's genuinely different.

They made something that's genuinely worse than already available weapons, there's no merity around guardian spear design no matter how hard a few people try to make it's case.

[draxynnic.3719]

So what do you want? Another greatsword? Another longbow? Pistol/pistol but as a 2H weapon? Axe/torch but as a 2H weapon?

Guardian doesn't need another weapon that does the same thing as the existing weapons. It'll either replace the existing weapon, in which case the existing weapon now sucks, or it won't, in which case the new weapon sucks. We're already seeing observations to that effect, such as the "what is the point of sceptre" thread (since sceptre is mostly overshadowed by longbow for power and pistols for condi). When you have a pile of weapons that all do the same thing, one of them is going to come out on top, and that's the real problem with all the "bad" guardian weapons you listed - they're not actually bad, they're just being outcompeted. A weapon that does something different has a use case. It might not be a use case you'll ever use, but the game isn't being made exclusively for you.

You might not like flamethrower-style weapons, but there are people who aren't you who do. This weapon evidently wasn't custom-designed for your tastes. That doesn't mean it's bad.

[Warscythes.9307]

Are you guys kidding? Spear is actually very competitive at the moment. It has opening burst comparable with soulbeast, good dps for dh. See video below and notice is radiance instead of virtues.

https://youtu.be/zK8H_Q67870

and is a perfectly replaceable weapon for staff in healbender because you are suppose to camp hammer anyway and staff has bad multi hit effects which you need to boonshare. Spear does this perfectly because you burst and swap back to hammer to auto attack. Is debateable on healbrand but is more of a sidegrade instead of downgrade. This is currently one of the better designed spears at the moment, where are you guys even getting this sort of feedback from? 

Edited August 22 by Warscythes.9307

[Supernova Starr.2069]

1 hour ago, draxynnic.3719 said:

So what do you want? Another greatsword? Another longbow? Pistol/pistol but as a 2H weapon? Axe/torch but as a 2H weapon?

Guardian doesn't need another weapon that does the same thing as the existing weapons. It'll either replace the existing weapon, in which case the existing weapon now sucks, or it won't, in which case the new weapon sucks. We're already seeing observations to that effect, such as the "what is the point of sceptre" thread (since sceptre is mostly overshadowed by longbow for power and pistols for condi). When you have a pile of weapons that all do the same thing, one of them is going to come out on top, and that's the real problem with all the "bad" guardian weapons you listed - they're not actually bad, they're just being outcompeted. A weapon that does something different has a use case. It might not be a use case you'll ever use, but the game isn't being made exclusively for you.

You might not like flamethrower-style weapons, but there are people who aren't you who do. This weapon evidently wasn't custom-designed for your tastes. That doesn't mean it's bad.

Your whole sentence is overstated to gaslight people to think there's nothing wrong with spear and it's unique style (which is not) and we are just not used yet, or in this case is no use for me, but if you cared enough you'd bother to at least open the Beta Spear thread to see the issues not only me but dozens others pointed out.

About the issues with other guardian weapons, there's plenty of threads, on Guardian sub, pointing out their issues, in all of the game modes, ArenaNet does not care enough to read or give them a thought hence is useless for me to point out the many problems we face.

But I'll tell you this: they did not succeed in the spear design, far from it, and that's not a personal opinion.

[Unicorn Luna.5204]

I like it, I don't see it as a viable healing replacement for mace/hammer/staff though. The DPS on it is very nice. 2>5>4>3>2 > swap weapons > do the same order every time I swap back to spear using virtues/utilities to fill up the time before weapon swap is ready because the auto is meh. Kinda glad to get a form of the TA lawn mower 1 skill back even though it's not as wide/far as the old staff 1 skill was. Not that I do TA much anymore. lol

[Kuya.6495]

I'm actually happy with Spear in spvp and have found it useful in open world. According to the snowcrows discord, spear may be meta for both power dh and power wb or at least a competitive alternative. 

Edited August 22 by Kuya.6495

[Warscythes.9307]

10 minutes ago, Unicorn Luna.5204 said:

I like it, I don't see it as a viable healing replacement for mace/hammer/staff though. The DPS on it is very nice. 2>5>4>3>2 > swap weapons > do the same order every time I swap back to spear using virtues/utilities to fill up the time before weapon swap is ready because the auto is meh. Kinda glad to get a form of the TA lawn mower 1 skill back even though it's not as wide/far as the old staff 1 skill was. Not that I do TA much anymore. lol

Is better than staff on healbender because you want to camp hammer. So the second weapon is always going to be whatever is the better quick swap and more multihits the better due to how alacrity is generated, spear is better than staff at it because it is the better "burst" option with more multi hits. You then immediately swap back to hammer and keep autoing.

Edited August 22 by Warscythes.9307

[Supernova Starr.2069]

33 minutes ago, Kuya.6495 said:

I'm actually happy with Spear in spvp and have found it useful in open world. According to the snowcrows discord, spear may be meta for both power dh and power wb or at least a competitive alternative. 

sPvP and roaming WvW are fine, PvE wise it's only a filler to GS, which S/F already does the job, which is why I'm mad at this weapon lol

Edited August 22 by Supernova Starr.2069

[Kuya.6495]

13 minutes ago, Supernova Starr.2069 said:

sPvP and roaming WvW are fine, PvE wise it's only a filler to GS, which S/F already does the job, which is why I'm mad at this weapon lol

Yea but if it's a replacement for sword/focus, isn't spear better? The spear heals, condi cleanses and provides boons such as might, fury and resistance. That sounds like better value if the dps numbers are similar.