Shouts and the Pure of Voice trait what are your thoughts?

[RUNICBLACK.7630]

As stated above , they changed the Warrior Shouts to Ammo based(all but Fear Me!) . Just curious what other Guardian main players think on this. Granted it wouldn't be as helpful to us as it is for the Warrior being as with their Shouts being traited they put out a decent party wide heal everytime. Just throwing it out there for discussion.

[Asum.4960]

Don't think I ever used shouts besides Stand your Ground and Feel my Wrath. Right now they just aren't competitive for the Utility slots even on a support build, as is the Grandmaster Trait with Writ of Persistence or Force of Will.

Feel my Wrath is nice when running easy content without Chrono, while Stand your Ground is a nice group Stab and or Stunbreak on demand, especially for Skorvald.If they slightly nerf Stand your Ground and Feel my Wrath but give them 2-3 charges, that might very well push them to be viable for a support Build though/make them better general picks, but that is problematic with Stand your Ground being a stun break.Even Hold the Line might be interesting with charges. Just seems to clash with FB mantras on a design level, as they would feel too similar just without the charge up time.For WvW, a spammable Stand your Ground might be too much on the other hand.

Retreat is just completely outdated, Receive the Light just massively overheals on a long CD and can't compete with Aegis Spam of the mantra, considering FB has massive heals covered already and Save yourselves is just.. weird?

Really only see charges being possible for Feel my Wrath and Hold the Line, but I think it clashes with Mantras design wise.

[RUNICBLACK.7630]

Thank you , good point on the whole issue/conflict of making them Ammo based , but keeping that in mind could you think of anyway that they could be reworked or redesigned so as to usable without hitting the dreaded overpowered problem. I've always wondered why they didn't give "Retreat" Vigor or something else and lower its cooldown so that if you took "Pure of Voice" it would be coming out of recharge just about the time that Swiftness was ending , this kind of also goes with the incredibly counter intuitive nature of the Staff Symbol of Swiftness where you put the symbol down while you're running but have to stop in the symbol to get any amount of Swiftness boon. Why not just give a flat amount of Swiftness to the Guardian just for casting it and anybody else can pass thru or stand in the Symbol. Never could see how that made any sense.

[otto.5684]

Stand your ground back to back. Why not ?

I think all guardians shouts except feel my wrath and stand your ground need an overhaul. Especially receive the light. The ammo will not work well. My suggestions:

Saver yourselves, remove the entire pulling condis to you. Reduce CD to 40 secs. Make the 2 sec resistance 5 targets.

Retreat, reduce CD to 25. Provides 2 secs super speed to 5 allies.

Hold the line, in addition to what it does, reduce incoming damage by 10% for 6 secs for 5 targets.

Receive the light, change something similar to ranger, we heal as one when traited. It should have an instant heal for you and heal overtime for you and allies with good heal scaling.

The idea is that shouts and honor line could become an alternative to meditations and valor. Also, give shouts a none boon component.

In honor major master traits, I would remove empowering might, since it is a useless trait. New trait, using a shout increases toughness by 250 for 4 secs and remove a 1 deliberating condi effect (to take effect before pure voice).

[Eekasqueak.7850]

I get a good amount of use from this trait and shouts but I do think some shouts could be a little better than they are now.

[Spartacus.3192]

i use Save Yourselves on my DPS Firebrand in WvW. With good boon duration you get well over 15 sec of nearly every boon in the game. Especially retaliation for the sweet bonuses from radiance trait. If you are smart in the way you use that shout you can get some really good burst out.

[RUNICBLACK.7630]

I was looking at the Shouts that were part of the game since its release as in those available to the Guardian, the Warrior, and the Ranger and the Guardian's are the only ones that are primarily defensive in nature. Feel My Wrath is more offensive but that was added in much later (June 2015) and Stand Your Ground is both offensive and defensive but overall the Guardian's Shouts are more heavily defensive. To make things even pronounced whether you looking at our limited offensive or our largely defensive Shouts ours are coming up rather lacking on return by comparison to either the Warrior or the Ranger be because of the actual effects themselves or the overly long recharge time. Prime example being Save Yourselves where the Guardian takes the conditions from allies and gain multiple boons for a short period of time using this Shout means that unless you have another way to clear the conditions you almost have to take Contemp!ation of Purity or you have a good chance of being downed from the conditions not to mention that boons that were gained lacking as far as risk versus reward(Why is this giving you only ONE stack of MIGHT!) and it took till 2017 to give this Shout Resistance (11/2 second only) when Resistance had been in the game since 2015 with the release of HoT.

[starlinvf.1358]

@"RUNICBLACK.7630" said:I was looking at the Shouts that were part of the game since its release as in those available to the Guardian, the Warrior, and the Ranger and the Guardian's are the only ones that are primarily defensive in nature. Feel My Wrath is more offensive but that was added in much later (June 2015) and Stand Your Ground is both offensive and defensive but overall the Guardian's Shouts are more heavily defensive. To make things even pronounced whether you looking at our limited offensive or our largely defensive Shouts ours are coming up rather lacking on return by comparison to either the Warrior or the Ranger be because of the actual effects themselves or the overly long recharge time. Prime example being Save Yourselves where the Guardian takes the conditions from allies and gain multiple boons for a short period of time using this Shout means that unless you have another way to clear the conditions you almost have to take Contemp!ation of Purity or you have a good chance of being downed from the conditions not to mention that boons that were gained lacking as far as risk versus reward(Why is this giving you only ONE stack of MIGHT!) and it took till 2017 to give this Shout Resistance (11/2 second only) when Resistance had been in the game since 2015 with the release of HoT.

Guard shouts are actually incredibly powerful in concept. The only thing it really suffers from is being outshadowed by Power Creep and the shift to Boon Rip paradigm. At launch, the boons were undervalued due to PvE's inability to capitalize on defense options, but when fully traited (and paired with Trooper runes) it became a very strong anti-condition setup that didn't compete with Guardian's offensive abilities. The outlier of course was Stability, and its total hard countering of all CCs.

I feel the real issue is in the current PvP/WvW meta being meant to be highly disruptive to boon share, and that Shouts are affected because thats precisely what its made for. Making the shouts more spamable doesn't "fix" anything, its just further stacking the counter point to Boon rip, which in turn eventually demands even more Boon rip.

And since we're on the subject of changes, if any shout really deserves resistance, its going to be Retreat. Or an alternative being Guard shouts converted to boon pulsing to match the pulsing boon rip that is its opposition.

[RUNICBLACK.7630]

Pulsing actually is a very interesting idea, could you expand on that somewhat?

[starlinvf.1358]

@"RUNICBLACK.7630" said:Pulsing actually is a very interesting idea, could expand on that somewhat?

Pulsing boons has been the Dev's "quick and dirty solution" to any skill that needs to compete against boon rip, as its reapplying in cadence with Anti-boon build's ability to rip them. (Mostly Scourge, Spell Breaker, and Dueling Memsers). That allows the skill to more or less be somewhat effective for its given duration, but still expose them to the threat of converted conditions. The most prominent skills are going to be Stability or Resistance related, since those 2 boons are the ones that prevent a player being shut down in a fight.

Guard shouts haven't changed much since the early days, and thus aren't balanced with awareness of Boon strip meta. So they get long duration of single stack of a boon (or with Stand your Ground/Stability, a large stack for WvW/PvP reasons), and are mostly balanced around their Uptime. Changing them to Pulsed boon application means you're getting a short timed stack of the boon multiple times over the course of the skill's main effect duration. If you need an example, Warriors Balanced Stance and Berzerker stance both work on this concept, and are the main reason they're taken in WvW over other skills that only offer one stack at a longer duration (which can be completely stripped, since Boon rips destroy the whole stack).

The down shot, however, is that boons that stack in intensity are less effective; with stability in particular being vulnerable to cases where multiple hard CCs occur in a short time span. A 10 stack of Stab can survive against a CC bomb, but Pulsed Stab won't, since its just 1 stack followed by a 0.5 - 1 second gap before the next pulse replaces it. But like I mentioned earlier, a 10 stack is gone in a single boon rip, but the pulsed stab has a chance to come back up before the next attack lands. You can also pulse a larger stack of Stability, but thus far the Devs haven't allowed that due to balance concerns.

[otto.5684]

@starlinvf.1358 said:

@"RUNICBLACK.7630" said:I was looking at the Shouts that were part of the game since its release as in those available to the Guardian, the Warrior, and the Ranger and the Guardian's are the only ones that are primarily defensive in nature. Feel My Wrath is more offensive but that was added in much later (June 2015) and Stand Your Ground is both offensive and defensive but overall the Guardian's Shouts are more heavily defensive. To make things even pronounced whether you looking at our limited offensive or our largely defensive Shouts ours are coming up rather lacking on return by comparison to either the Warrior or the Ranger be because of the actual effects themselves or the overly long recharge time. Prime example being Save Yourselves where the Guardian takes the conditions from allies and gain multiple boons for a short period of time using this Shout means that unless you have another way to clear the conditions you almost have to take Contemp!ation of Purity or you have a good chance of being downed from the conditions not to mention that boons that were gained lacking as far as risk versus reward(Why is this giving you only ONE stack of MIGHT!) and it took till 2017 to give this Shout Resistance (11/2 second only) when Resistance had been in the game since 2015 with the release of HoT.

Guard shouts are actually incredibly powerful in concept. The only thing it really suffers from is being outshadowed by Power Creep and the shift to Boon Rip paradigm. At launch, the boons were undervalued due to PvE's inability to capitalize on defense options, but when fully traited (and paired with Trooper runes) it became a very strong anti-condition setup that didn't compete with Guardian's offensive abilities. The outlier of course was Stability, and its total hard countering of all CCs.

I feel the real issue is in the current PvP/WvW meta being meant to be highly disruptive to boon share, and that Shouts are affected because thats precisely what its made for. Making the shouts more spamable doesn't "fix" anything, its just further stacking the counter point to Boon rip, which in turn eventually demands even more Boon rip.

And since we're on the subject of changes, if any shout really deserves resistance, its going to be Retreat. Or an alternative being Guard shouts converted to boon pulsing to match the pulsing boon rip that is its opposition.

There are multiple paradigm shifts:

1. Boon rip as you mentioned.
2. 1 aegis every 30 sec, reg and protection are relics for GW2 at release. As sustainability tools these do not offer too much value currently.
3. Overall, shouts cannot compete at all with mediations, in neither self sustain or condi removal. Also, they cannot compete with mantras.
4. Redesign of core guardian lines. In the past, radiance as a line had no PvP presence. Valor is mandatory and typically virtues. With radiance being mandatory to deal damage, there is not any room for honor or shouts.
5. Most importantly healing. Guardian heals skills suck, if you exclude LoR and elite heals. Again, they are relics of the past when guardian theoretically relied on sustain from other skills and the heals were secondary5. Receive the light is the biggest offender among all guardian heal skills. This renders any build centered around shouts impossible.

Again, Stand Your Grand is fully viable in every game mode and Feel my Wrath is the best solo PvE elite and has place in other builds. Everything else has no place (I use save yourself for retaliation uptime in solo PvE, but that is way beside the point). The only way shouts can be viable they have to be used in PvP as alternative to mediations and honor as an alternative to valor. Until that happens, we will remain in stats quo.

[Rodrick.1942]

@Asum.4960 said:Don't think I ever used shouts besides Stand your Ground and Feel my Wrath. Right now they just aren't competitive for the Utility slots even on a support build, as is the Grandmaster Trait with Writ of Persistence or Force of Will.

Feel my Wrath is nice when running easy content without Chrono, while Stand your Ground is a nice group Stab and or Stunbreak on demand, especially for Skorvald.If they slightly nerf Stand your Ground and Feel my Wrath but give them 2-3 charges, that might very well push them to be viable for a support Build though/make them better general picks, but that is problematic with Stand your Ground being a stun break.Even Hold the Line might be interesting with charges. Just seems to clash with FB mantras on a design level, as they would feel too similar just without the charge up time.For WvW, a spammable Stand your Ground might be too much on the other hand.

Retreat is just completely outdated, Receive the Light just massively overheals on a long CD and can't compete with Aegis Spam of the mantra, considering FB has massive heals covered already and Save yourselves is just.. weird?

Really only see charges being possible for Feel my Wrath and Hold the Line, but I think it clashes with Mantras design wise.

Save urself can transfer all the condition your teammates have to urself, which is really useful for raid sloth fight. It can be used to absorb the fear from teammates, or when they get hit by shake

[otto.5684]

@Rodrick.1942 said:

@Asum.4960 said:Don't think I ever used shouts besides Stand your Ground and Feel my Wrath. Right now they just aren't competitive for the Utility slots even on a support build, as is the Grandmaster Trait with Writ of Persistence or Force of Will.

Feel my Wrath is nice when running easy content without Chrono, while Stand your Ground is a nice group Stab and or Stunbreak on demand, especially for Skorvald.If they slightly nerf Stand your Ground and Feel my Wrath but give them 2-3 charges, that might very well push them to be viable for a support Build though/make them better general picks, but that is problematic with Stand your Ground being a stun break.Even Hold the Line might be interesting with charges. Just seems to clash with FB mantras on a design level, as they would feel too similar just without the charge up time.For WvW, a spammable Stand your Ground might be too much on the other hand.

Retreat is just completely outdated, Receive the Light just massively overheals on a long CD and can't compete with Aegis Spam of the mantra, considering FB has massive heals covered already and Save yourselves is just.. weird?

Really only see charges being possible for Feel my Wrath and Hold the Line, but I think it clashes with Mantras design wise.

Save urself can transfer all the condition your teammates have to urself, which is really useful for raid sloth fight. It can be used to absorb the fear from teammates, or when they get hit by shake

I can do the same thing with smite which has 20 sec CD and deals damage. Also, there are tons of skills that guardian and other classes have that can do an AOE cleanse. This is not a unique concept by any means. As it stands Save Yourselves is only used in PvE for retaliation uptime. Hardly ever needed in group PvE.

[Rodrick.1942]

@otto.5684 said:

@Rodrick.1942 said:

@"Asum.4960" said:Don't think I ever used shouts besides Stand your Ground and Feel my Wrath. Right now they just aren't competitive for the Utility slots even on a support build, as is the Grandmaster Trait with Writ of Persistence or Force of Will.

Feel my Wrath is nice when running easy content without Chrono, while Stand your Ground is a nice group Stab and or Stunbreak on demand, especially for Skorvald.If they slightly nerf Stand your Ground and Feel my Wrath but give them 2-3 charges, that might very well push them to be viable for a support Build though/make them better general picks, but that is problematic with Stand your Ground being a stun break.Even Hold the Line might be interesting with charges. Just seems to clash with FB mantras on a design level, as they would feel too similar just without the charge up time.For WvW, a spammable Stand your Ground might be too much on the other hand.

Retreat is just completely outdated, Receive the Light just massively overheals on a long CD and can't compete with Aegis Spam of the mantra, considering FB has massive heals covered already and Save yourselves is just.. weird?

Really only see charges being possible for Feel my Wrath and Hold the Line, but I think it clashes with Mantras design wise.

Save urself can transfer all the condition your teammates have to urself, which is really useful for raid sloth fight. It can be used to absorb the fear from teammates, or when they get hit by shake

I can do the same thing with smite which has 20 sec CD and deals damage. Also, there are tons of skills that guardian and other classes have that can do an AOE cleanse. This is not a unique concept by any means. As it stands Save Yourselves is only used in PvE for retaliation uptime. Hardly ever needed in group PvE.

Only in that fight , u cant give others stability because slugs can corrupt stability to fear ; and about Smite Condition, it doesn't have any stun-break effect , which means you are not be able to cast that skill while under fear effect.

For now only ranger's protect me and ele' eye of the storm can break stun for ally "without give stability". Most ppl would rather just take 2 druid as main healer. My purpose is to point out that healer FB can replace main healer by using our save yourself to deal with fear and other heavy condition problem.

Ps : stand your ground and save yourself has stun break effect on guardian him/her self upon cast, stand your ground then give others 5 stacks of stab ; save yourself immediately give tons of boons(including resistance) and absorb all conditions from nearby ally to guardian itself

[otto.5684]

@Rodrick.1942 said:

@otto.5684 said:

@Rodrick.1942 said:

@"Asum.4960" said:Don't think I ever used shouts besides Stand your Ground and Feel my Wrath. Right now they just aren't competitive for the Utility slots even on a support build, as is the Grandmaster Trait with Writ of Persistence or Force of Will.

Feel my Wrath is nice when running easy content without Chrono, while Stand your Ground is a nice group Stab and or Stunbreak on demand, especially for Skorvald.If they slightly nerf Stand your Ground and Feel my Wrath but give them 2-3 charges, that might very well push them to be viable for a support Build though/make them better general picks, but that is problematic with Stand your Ground being a stun break.Even Hold the Line might be interesting with charges. Just seems to clash with FB mantras on a design level, as they would feel too similar just without the charge up time.For WvW, a spammable Stand your Ground might be too much on the other hand.

Retreat is just completely outdated, Receive the Light just massively overheals on a long CD and can't compete with Aegis Spam of the mantra, considering FB has massive heals covered already and Save yourselves is just.. weird?

Really only see charges being possible for Feel my Wrath and Hold the Line, but I think it clashes with Mantras design wise.

Save urself can transfer all the condition your teammates have to urself, which is really useful for raid sloth fight. It can be used to absorb the fear from teammates, or when they get hit by shake

I can do the same thing with smite which has 20 sec CD and deals damage. Also, there are tons of skills that guardian and other classes have that can do an AOE cleanse. This is not a unique concept by any means. As it stands Save Yourselves is only used in PvE for retaliation uptime. Hardly ever needed in group PvE.

Only in that fight , u cant give others stability because slugs can corrupt stability to fear ; and about Smite Condition, it doesn't have any stun-break effect , which means you are not be able to cast that skill while under fear effect.

For now only ranger's protect me and ele' eye of the storm can break stun for ally "without give stability". Most ppl would rather just take 2 druid as main healer. My purpose is to point out that healer FB can replace main healer by using our save yourself to deal with fear and other heavy condition problem.

Ps : stand your ground and save yourself has stun break effect on guardian him/her self upon cast, stand your ground then give others 5 stacks of stab ; save yourself immediately give tons of boons(including resistance) and absorb all conditions from nearby ally to guardian itself

FYI, smite does removes fear and when it does, you no longer CCed. Same with all condi removal.

[Asum.4960]

@Rodrick.1942 said:

@otto.5684 said:

@Rodrick.1942 said:

@"Asum.4960" said:Don't think I ever used shouts besides Stand your Ground and Feel my Wrath. Right now they just aren't competitive for the Utility slots even on a support build, as is the Grandmaster Trait with Writ of Persistence or Force of Will.

Feel my Wrath is nice when running easy content without Chrono, while Stand your Ground is a nice group Stab and or Stunbreak on demand, especially for Skorvald.If they slightly nerf Stand your Ground and Feel my Wrath but give them 2-3 charges, that might very well push them to be viable for a support Build though/make them better general picks, but that is problematic with Stand your Ground being a stun break.Even Hold the Line might be interesting with charges. Just seems to clash with FB mantras on a design level, as they would feel too similar just without the charge up time.For WvW, a spammable Stand your Ground might be too much on the other hand.

Retreat is just completely outdated, Receive the Light just massively overheals on a long CD and can't compete with Aegis Spam of the mantra, considering FB has massive heals covered already and Save yourselves is just.. weird?

Really only see charges being possible for Feel my Wrath and Hold the Line, but I think it clashes with Mantras design wise.

Save urself can transfer all the condition your teammates have to urself, which is really useful for raid sloth fight. It can be used to absorb the fear from teammates, or when they get hit by shake

I can do the same thing with smite which has 20 sec CD and deals damage. Also, there are tons of skills that guardian and other classes have that can do an AOE cleanse. This is not a unique concept by any means. As it stands Save Yourselves is only used in PvE for retaliation uptime. Hardly ever needed in group PvE.

Only in that fight , u cant give others stability because slugs can corrupt stability to fear ; and about Smite Condition, it doesn't have any stun-break effect , which means you are not be able to cast that skill while under fear effect.

For now only ranger's protect me and ele' eye of the storm can break stun for ally "without give stability". Most ppl would rather just take 2 druid as main healer. My purpose is to point out that healer FB can replace main healer by using our save yourself to deal with fear and other heavy condition problem.

Ps : stand your ground and save yourself has stun break effect on guardian him/her self upon cast, stand your ground then give others 5 stacks of stab ; save yourself immediately give tons of boons(including resistance) and absorb all conditions from nearby ally to guardian itself

Or take a Daredevil DPS who removes all conditions of the entire Squad with the Stolen Skill. Makes Sloth a breeze.Heal Scourge as secondary healer can spam Condi removal with barriers and F2 as well, while also recovering the squad if a shake or something like that goes horribly wrong with it's ress power.

But I guess it does have extremely niche uses..

[SnowHawke.5647]

I'm somewhat of a returning player. The last time I spent a serious amount of time playing GW2 was probably 3-4 years ago. I've logged in every now and them to check on things, but never really kept up with the game changes. Back then I ran a Guardian build that used a Hammer, Shouts, Trooper runes (used to be called Soldier runes) and the combination of Pure of Voice and Altruistic Healing grandmaster traits.

The idea being, you use Shouts to remove conditions on you (you remove 2 with Trooper runes and Pure of Voice) and to heal you (via applying boons to yourself and others). Another way to get boons on yourself (thereby healing you) was to do a skill combo with the symbol at the end of the Hammer's auto-attack. A good way to heal yourself was to use Empower (skill #4 on the Staff) and this was pretty effective when surrounded by other players like WvW. There was also a trait that gives you a boon after every dodge, which again heals you. Damage comes via crits, using the trait that gives you more precision the more toughness you have. I used this mainly for PVE and was a very good survival build and wasn't that bad at dealing damage.

I remember my wife using my Guardian to do some map completion for me and she said that my Guardian just wouldn't die in PVE (to her credit, she is a pretty good player.) Anyway, since this thread talks about Shouts, I thought I'd ask here, is this no longer a viable build now?

[otto.5684]

@SnowHawke.5647 Unfortunately it is no longer viable. You give up so much healing and condi removal when using shouts and honor. In PvE it will be totally fine, but there is no reason to use shouts or honor for dps builds (I use save yourselves and feel my wrath for solo play though). The support build uses Fire Brand and assuming you are going for 100% quickness uptime the only shout you would use is feel my wrath.

[SnowHawke.5647]

@otto.5684 said:@SnowHawke.5647 Unfortunately it is no longer viable. You give up so much healing and condi removal when using shouts and honor. In PvE it will be totally fine, but there is no reason to use shouts or honor for dps builds (I use save yourselves and feel my wrath for solo play though). The support build uses Fire Brand and assuming you are going for 100% quickness uptime the only shout you would use is feel my wrath.

Thanks for the insight into the current state of the game.