Update - Friday, July 22, 2011

Nicely put.

We lost brainless mash-button spam skill and got intereting one instead.

And people are annoyed because their popular build got slight nerf?

This is sad. Very sad. Instead of welcoming new build (= new content), people are pissed because they can't grind game exactly same way they were for several years already. Pathetic.

I think a lot of ppl are over estimating the skill's usefullness in PvE....It'll be use briefly used then abandoned. The 20 sec rc and the 4 sec duration for a chance at a heal make the skill weak in PvE. The skill slot can and will be filled by more usefull skills...i.e...it won't be used once ppl get over the intial trial phase. (ofc this is my opinion..we'll see as time progresses)

OT:

One part of me wholeheartly agree with this.
The other ask what would be left to eles in HM pve if ER got nerfed.
(Read: AP or nothing-and there are ppl who'd like to see AP restricted.)

Or you could use Blood Bond which is a much better skill...6 and 1/2 dozen of the other I suppose.

Use Reversal of Fortune, you crybabbies.

I swear, if Anet went ahead and reworked Healing Signet one idiot who had their build changed would start the QQ and then, apparently, everyone who ever played Warrior would scream OMG NERF MAI WARRIOR HOW DARE U ANET?

As to the new SG, my thoughts:

- When it works, it works well. Really well. Its possibly the first earshot-range spell that actually takes some skill to use rather than mashing it on recharge.

- When it doesn't work, its bad. The problem is that the 75% block rate means it can potentially not work even if you use it right. After 6 years of guild wars everyone pretty much agrees that 50% block rate is good, and 75% is amazing. 75% does not work well enough for SG, either in PvP or PvE, because with the short timing simple statistical variability can mess you up too easily. I still maintain that this skill would be quite fine in a pre-OPTheRED ENGINE GORED ENGINE GORED ENGINE GORED ENGINE GOOutOfEverything (read: pre-nightfall) environment, but for making it worthy now it could use some slight tweaks.

Suggested changes (pick any):

- Increase duration to 2...5, with a breakpoint of 5s at r12. This would force PvPers to actually hold back for more than half a second in their pressure. This makes it much better as an indirect prot-enhancer, because it distinctly discourages target switching and thereby makes single target prot significantly stronger during its duration. I'm trying to be conservative with this, if it got to 7/8s w/+20% enchants we could be in real danger of Shield Guardian chains that make pressuring useless. On the PvE side, it simply makes it more reliable even during slight mistimings, which makes it much more attractive there.

- 100% block rate. Sounds extreme, but when an attacker might only get in 1 or 2 attacks before SG ends or (in PvP) figures out to hold back for .5s, you absolutely need SG to trigger on that first attack. In contrast to the above, this makes a skill that physicals in PvP have to react to instantly by or face the consequences. This makes it more useful and harder to play against.

- if SG lasts its full duration, heal the player it is on 10...40 health. Probably the most uninspiring and tactically uninteresting change, but it avoids 100% block rate which some may find silly and ensures no chance of ugly SG chaining.

Your idea of balance appears to be whatever grossly overpowered bar you like running not getting indirectly nerfed as a PvP change.

Cry me a river.

If this is a nerf to ER, than big lol: you guys need to learn how to hit with that bat, because what you are doing now is closer to "poking".

If this is a pvp update, I don't think you managed to buff it enough.

I'll miss the old Shield Guardian, simply for its OP'ness. But, the ER Protter is still pretty powerful so I cant complain. Just have to be a little more careful when aggroing alot of physical foes, no biggy.

I kinda like the idea of turning OP PvE skills into useful PvP skills. I just hope the new SG finds some use in PvP, otherwise the skill change didnt accomplish anything but yet another nerf to Ele's. Poor PvE Ele's, they cant catch a break.

The old SG wasn't actually that good, ER's used it because of its recharge, something RoF will acomplish just as easily. So yeah...it was a non-key Monk skill used in one and only one Ele build that's not exactly common anyway, yet this is a skill worth splitting?

Heal should depend on divine favor, for obvious reasons...

Looks literally impossible to get the full amount of benefits out of this skill in organised PvP.

Personally, I can't see it being used.

Say what you like, but the fact remains that the new version sucks badly for PvE. Feel free to prove me wrong by posting a screenshot or video of this skill delivering on its supposed promise in a general PvE setting, but please stop with the theorycraft cheerleading.

Shield Guardian won't be useful for the SC community and those players that live by tanking to soak up all the aggro. I can see it being more useful in generic pve when you just run staright into a mob and everything is scattered everywhere.

Lots! Once mesmers, rits and necros are nerfed.

When I saw this update I was like:
O____o
What was the point?

Shield Guardian is gone which hurts my ER ele a little, big wop, Spirit Bond says "Hi!" A skill that grants a few seconds of invincibility and is spammable. Oh and Infuse Health is there, chillin' with the big healz.

ArenaNet can't nerf ER ele's due to the fact they can't do crap for damage, making the class utterly useless. It would be the same as nerfing Save Yourselves! and Frenzy, without that, it become easily outclassed by other professions. Unless they change how elemental damage, deals damage.

This skill has no place for PvP, Healing Burst is all the party-wide heals you need. The recharge and casting time kills it in GvG and HA, plus it's in protection prayers thus making it useless in RA. I have yet won a 25 win streak with any protection prayers skill on my bar.

Hey ArenaNet, you win RA with rebbaring Healing Burst, Patient Spirit and Signet of Rejuvenation. Hell, I got 25 wins last night without Vigorous Spirit, instead I brought "None Shall Pass!" in it's place for lolwut. I'm shocked no one on my team posted "What's The Stupidest Thing You've Heard While Playing Guild Wars?" on my build and yes, 25 wins, without Vigorous Spirit. So dumb.

It's like ArenaNet tried to send a message saying, "We see the problem and we will fix it with a light tweek. Fixing one powerful build to be less powerful and giving the skill Shield Guardian use! We smart!" Then forgetting completely about how meta game is.

Edit:
OH, I figured out the use for it! It is to buff monsters in PvE, since they can't figure out how to spam 1 skill.

Sure, I'm not disagreeing with your assessment of the skill's relative lack of viability as of the moment in GvG, but
um

what

??????????????????????????????????????

If it was specifically a PvP update why did they nerf a PvE meta skill? This was used on almost every ER E/Mo hero in the game. The E/Mo hero was part of the PvE meta.

If they had no intention of altering PvE, why did they kill the skill from being used in its previous highly popular form instead of simply spliting them? PvE already had Aegis in it's old functionality (and mostly only /N ran that) we didn't need a second skill to do a weaker version of Aegis for the same cost and recharge. Any monk that runs protection prayers is going to be running healing as well, they won't be desperate for the heal this skill is going to provide. This skill isn't a boon for PvE monks, it's a nerf for PvE E/Mos.

Regardless of what this skill does for PvP players, they didn't split it for PvE even though they nerfed a very common, powerful and popular use of it. If you are playing end game HM PvE and your party has several classes taking hits at the same time (enough to get multiple Shield Guardian triggers) you are doing something seriously wrong and have bigger problems than a little healing will fix.

A good PvE team should only get one trigger off of this skill at most.

I wish I didn't have to repost this from the update thread just a day before.

Go make a thread for PvE class balance discussions if you really want to talk about it. Keep it out of this thread.

I'm sure someone from the Test Krewe proper will come along to correct me, but to the best of my knowledge, there was exactly zero discussion about any potential PvE ramifications of changing Shield Guardian's functionality.

Either the Live Team was completely unaware, or they didn't care.

Well, skills that are heavily used and are staples in the current meta are usually prime targets for skill changes and I applaud Anet for killing two birds with one stone.

pve meta... lol pretty sure there are many many builds that can steam roll pve

pve must be serious aye clearing underworld and doa in less then an hour. try having nothing handed to you once in a while mate. what this game needs is less red bar button mashing skills

I could have understood eventually a complain about discord nerf, but about healing burst on an ele which is a hero... really....
You can take multiple copies of same OP bars today, so i can't understand this QQ'ing.... SoR monk( same one from hero battles), monk bars from tutella or blahks in HA, 3-7 invoke eles with rupt, 3-7 earth eles, etc.... all those bars come from PvP fit really well PvE( but ye, considering those aren't on the wiki, they will hardly be used....)

On topic, i think that it would be better to just have some kind of skills pool every month rather than flux and those skill updates.... it's too much like rotating around the same skills( nerf it , bring it back , nerf it , bring it back in OP mode , etc....) leading to a game with 2 builds only.....

Just to say, axing skill balance which affect whole game simply on who won MAT with which build isn't a good way of dealing with problems

Putting more skills into the game degenerates client performance? Or atleast that's what has been told.

Either way, it's pretty obvious to see why they dind't split it:

Either change the description of an existing skill, or make a whole new skill and remove another one. That's a pretty easy choice from Anet's POV.

On top that, ER is still redicilously (Go Lemming!) strong without that skill, I really don't see why people moan. Burning Speed, Spirit Bond, RoF, Reversal of Damage, ...

Anyone notice how very similar this skill seems to be to the GW2 Guardian's virtues? Not a coincidence, IMO.

you know what else it's similar to

old shield guardian on your whole party

Except it only has 1/3 of the duration, heals for only 1/2(x-8), takes 4 times as long to cast, and takes 20 times longer to recharge.

Good. That means it depends on the user actually using his/her brain in order to get positive outcomes out of it. It means you have to do more than push buttons in a predetermined sequence in order to actually accomplish things. It means you have to actually watch the battlefield and properly time the use of the skill rather than spamming it on your whole party on recharge. It means good players will excel, and bad players will fail. This is what balance is. And we need a helluva lot more of it.

Thing is, monks aren't gonna bring a skill that will only probably work one time in a span of 4-5 seconds every 20 seconds for 10 energy. The skill is still way too risk than reward.

Pardon me sir, but it does not take much brain in order to see if foes are attacking a party. There isn't any increased skill difficulty with the new Shield Guardian in PvE. Bad players failed with the old Shield Guardian from not watching spikes to their energy, poor weapon sets, and only enchanting themselves with things. Not saying the old Shield Guardian was a skillful skill, but that argument is nonsense.

Yup. Recharge is the killer for PvE use. Bring it down to something like 10sec and I might consider using it on my Monk. A 20sec cool-down for a skill that gives protection vs 1 attack in a window of 4sec is terrible; regardless of the AoE heal effect.

It's all well and good to have a skill that performs better with smarter use. The problem here is that the results for dumb use are abysmal and the results for smart use are terrible. For PvE purposes, it's strictly inferior to Aegis, or even stuff like Divine Healing or Breath of the Great Dwarf.

Like I said before, if you want to cheerlead for the new SG, let's see some videos/screenshots of in-game performance that justifies the praise.

The next mAT would be a great place to see if the new SG is viable, but that would require people using it in normal ATs... with actual success.

I'm looking for general-purpose PvE usefulness. I have no doubt that it's at least marginally useful in the PvP-versus-dervishes context it was obviously intended for.

PvE doesn't need it because PvE already has Aegis. The short duration and long recharge seriously hurt the skill and when there's so many other things going, it's not useful in PvE.

My Healing Burst heals all party members at 13 Divine Favor for 40 health, heals an ally 150. Recharges every 4 seconds, costs 5 energy.

Shield Guardian heals all party members at 13 protection prayers for 40 health, blocks 1 freaking attack. Recharges every 25 seconds, costs 10 energy.

By the time this skill recharges, Healing Burst could be cast, say, 5 times, healing everyone the same amount Shield Guardian does on top of Healing Bursts +150 heal.

This is completely useless in PvP. If this was an update meant for PvP, they nerfed a skill no one uses.

^^not to play the Devil's Advocate, but not everyone is calling this skill incredibly useful. More that it is just another option that has a more practical use in PvP than it's previous version did.

About it's usefulness in PvE... yeah, there are many other options for both party healing and spammable blocks that will eventually become more viable than SG was. Stop crying over it. Not because it's pointless, but because, for Christ's sake, it's PVE!

It blocks one attack on everyone within earshot. If 3 people block an attack, you're looking at 108 health (it heals for 36 at 13 prot) on everyone within earshot.

Besides, comparing an elite with a non-elite, complaining the non-elite do less healing or have a longer recharge?

Well, that's pretty much the sum.

The fact is that in pve SG had his niche. Small (one single build-ER) but shined in that one. In pvp had nearly no use.

New version seems to be designed to counter dervish trains running arond in every high pvp match. Pity that if that was the aim, this skill really doesn't change anything, due to short duration and blablabla. And in pve is nearly useless now.

So, don't get me wrong, nobody wants to complain (ER still run w/o prob.. & pvp won't feel huge difference), but i just don't see any reason behind changing a pvp useless skill in another useless one while deleting it from pve enviroment.

This is the only thing that bugs me.

[I didn't want to start a pve blancing discussion and get posts deleted, but is just that this change was really unexpected for me...and others seems.]

You have absolutely no idea what you're talking about. Healing Burst is not sufficient party healing for either 8v8 format. RA is not the golden standard for PvP.

This, plus the fact that it's non-elite.

If Zodiac wants to say that you can cast Healing Burst 5 times in the time it takes for SG to recharge...well, hey, you just spent 25 energy vs 10, and used your elite 5 times; you damn well better be getting more mileage out of that! It's not like HB is going to manage all your party healing needs on its own.

I take Breath of the Great Dwarf in PvE when I need a quick party heal. This can get a much bigger heal if you use it correctly, and it will heal all allies, which really can't be emphasized enough in PvE. The trade off is the recharge. FFS, it's a party heal in prot! It's not a godlike skill, it's a balanced skill. Are you all so jaded by PvE skills and consumables that you can't recognize that a 20 second recharge on a skill that greatly rewards skillful use it a good thing?