Guild Wars 2

I found Guardian way harder to play after I played a Warrior, here are the reasons :

• Has more micromanagement to do (Virtues and high cooldown on skills vs Warrior Adrenaline and Low Cooldowns )
• Has less weapon options
• Most weapons are bad in comparison to other classes ( good weapons are GS and Scepter/Torch, Sword/Focus VS all Warrior weapons are good )
• Very slow class ( has only GS3 for mobility, Retreat and Save Yourselves are 60 sec CD vs Warrior GS 3, 5 Horn 5, Sword 2, Banner, Bullrush and other skills, Swiftness from traits )
• Long Cooldowns ( more than half of Guardian skills needs 40 seconds to be reused vs Warrior more than half of Warrior skills needs less than 40 seconds to be reused )
• Guardian ABSOLUTELY REQUIRES traiting for less cooldown so you WASTE 1 or 2 traits for less CD.
• Warrior does not need to trait for cooldown reduction.
• Guardian has Protection 33% less damage received vs Warrior FUMBLE 50% less damage received
• Warriors higher Health pool and Effective Health Pool (EHP)
• Warriors can heal the same as Guardian
• Mobility again : makes you not take damage so youre a better tanker and you can ESCAPE FIGHTS that you would lose. If a Guardian is not going to win a fight, he is very likely NOT TO BE ABLE TO ESCAPE (unlike thief, mesmer, warrior)

Thats my perception on playing the classes. I feel Guardian is a subpar warrior in sPVP and WvW, I cant comment on PVE because Ive leveled from 2 to 80 on WvW.

I believe the Guardian mobility issues would be solved if he could teleport forward 900 range by using Sword 2 without a target selected.

And Guardian cooldowns needs to be brought in line with Warrior’s.

Then I belive the Guardian would be ‘balanced’.

Warriors are broken yeah we get it.

6/10.

Pretty good!

Especally, if you are talking about PvP / WvW your arguments are very invalid, sorry.
With a simple standard mediation guard build, you have access to vigor, a lot of blocks, blinds and you are with 3 mediations more sustained than a warrior. You can make so many mistakes and be still alive with incredible condition convert and awesome selfheal while you are dealing huge damage.
Medguard is the only class which is nearly as easy to play as a warrior in PvP.
No execuses

dominik.9721:

Especally, if you are talking about PvP / WvW your arguments are very invalid, sorry.
With a simple standard mediation guard build, you have access to vigor, a lot of blocks, blinds and you are with 3 mediations more sustained than a warrior. You can make so many mistakes and be still alive with incredible condition convert and awesome selfheal while you are dealing huge damage.
Medguard is the only class which is nearly as easy to play as a warrior in PvP.
No execuses

Um what? over 5k hours on guardian and I’m going to say this, meditation healing only takes you so far. The normal Meditation builds have barely any protection and are pretty squishy very squishy. Most of the survivability comes from well timed dodges blinds and some blocks. Which is to compensate for the low health pool. If you aren’t running Traveler’s you’ll feel slow, and most classes that know guardian can easily kite you around. Not to mention any sort of Chain CC or Condition overload will normally be the end of you or flip a fight heavily against you. You don’t have any escape buttons and you don’t have mad CC stuns. And if you want to compare bring a shout warrior with HS. Just as potent as a meditation guard’s heals. And as far as SPVP goes other classes they’re food in team fights or just food for me in general.

Comparing Warrior and Guardian is actually an interesting topic. I personally feel Guardian play more rewarding. Warrior is very straight forward. I think I read it in another thread, that the difference from bad to good warriors is minimal. I kinda agree with that. Low cool downs, easy to manage adrenaline system and only build reliant trade offs make warrior all around easier to play, while it is harder to master the guardian imho.

That said, I think that a well played Guardian is stronger and can offer more to a team than a well played Warrior. But that might only be my personal perception.

Lucentfir.7430:

dominik.9721:

Especally, if you are talking about PvP / WvW your arguments are very invalid, sorry.
With a simple standard mediation guard build, you have access to vigor, a lot of blocks, blinds and you are with 3 mediations more sustained than a warrior. You can make so many mistakes and be still alive with incredible condition convert and awesome selfheal while you are dealing huge damage.
Medguard is the only class which is nearly as easy to play as a warrior in PvP.
No execuses

Um what? over 5k hours on guardian and I’m going to say this, meditation healing only takes you so far. The normal Meditation builds have barely any protection and are pretty squishy very squishy. Most of the survivability comes from well timed dodges blinds and some blocks. Which is to compensate for the low health pool. If you aren’t running Traveler’s you’ll feel slow, and most classes that know guardian can easily kite you around. Not to mention any sort of Chain CC or Condition overload will normally be the end of you or flip a fight heavily against you. You don’t have any escape buttons and you don’t have mad CC stuns. And if you want to compare bring a shout warrior with HS. Just as potent as a meditation guard’s heals. And as far as SPVP goes other classes they’re food in team fights or just food for me in general.

Firstly, you don’t run traveler – you run flame legion to gain the dmg boost by burning foes.
Secondly, “well timed” dodges has to be a joke, isn’kitten It doesn’t matter if you fail a pindown, which would be the game over inmediately for other classes like mesmer, nor it matters if you get hit by a necro fearchain with singet of instawin because your mediation is a stunbreaker, too.
Thirdly, the random blocks and blinds are very usefull to survive and scepter auotattack pewpewpew is also very strong.

I don’t say Guard is easy but it isn’t that harder than warrior and doesn’t require that amount of skill some people think – deal with it.
I’m watching so many dps-guards in 1vs1-Server and while watching them , I can’t say wheather they are experience dps-guards or inexperience guards
On the contrary, I saw so many times fameous dps guards losing against some random guards.

EDIT: Do you really compare med guard to a shoutwarrior? shout warrior isn’t even really viable in PvP..

guards are slow… and that sucks all the fun out of playing them…

…but it’s the low health pool that severely limits the variety of viable builds.

sadly but true guardians are extremely hard to play and dont have so many escapes skills
and for a thief is just simply wait for the guard to use skill hide and stab him in the back repeatedly knowing that he cannot escape like the warr with the gs and for weapon options some weapons are extreme long cooldown on the most important skills that can make the guard survive (hammer) a lost dream with the skills and usage

Rasalhague.8270:

I found Guardian way harder to play after I played a Warrior, here are the reasons :

• Has more micromanagement to do (Virtues and high cooldown on skills vs Warrior Adrenaline and Low Cooldowns )
• Has less weapon options
• Most weapons are bad in comparison to other classes ( good weapons are GS and Scepter/Torch, Sword/Focus VS all Warrior weapons are good )
• Very slow class ( has only GS3 for mobility, Retreat and Save Yourselves are 60 sec CD vs Warrior GS 3, 5 Horn 5, Sword 2, Banner, Bullrush and other skills, Swiftness from traits )
• Long Cooldowns ( more than half of Guardian skills needs 40 seconds to be reused vs Warrior more than half of Warrior skills needs less than 40 seconds to be reused )
• Guardian ABSOLUTELY REQUIRES traiting for less cooldown so you WASTE 1 or 2 traits for less CD.
• Warrior does not need to trait for cooldown reduction.
• Guardian has Protection 33% less damage received vs Warrior FUMBLE 50% less damage received
• Warriors higher Health pool and Effective Health Pool (EHP)
• Warriors can heal the same as Guardian
• Mobility again : makes you not take damage so youre a better tanker and you can ESCAPE FIGHTS that you would lose. If a Guardian is not going to win a fight, he is very likely NOT TO BE ABLE TO ESCAPE (unlike thief, mesmer, warrior)

Thats my perception on playing the classes. I feel Guardian is a subpar warrior in sPVP and WvW, I cant comment on PVE because Ive leveled from 2 to 80 on WvW.

Here we go again!

@Dominik
Runes are personal choice and flame legion runes are a decent choice to mix with Fiery Wrath but if you don’t want to be ran away from easily during a fight from a class with decent swiftness up time or 25% movement signet/trait you’ll want travelers runes to not feel like a turtle. JI and blinks isn’t much when the target you’ve blinked too gets out of your attack range right after(Because you have no soft CC to keep them in your range)

Well timed dodges isn’t a joke. There’s been many times I’ve seen animation of a skill on other classes such as Warrior. Skullcrack or hammer CC chain which I can dodge and follow up with a blind right after to avoid the next hit and get some hits in. The other times too dodging Eviserates that would have otherwise likely chunk me for a large bit of my health.

Over for mesmers and other classes you mean kind of like Mace+Shield/GS warrior, or a Eviscerate warrior? The only mesmers that get dunked by the burst of a guardian like that are absolute glass that don’t know it’s a DPS speced guardian. I know clone death hybrid/condi mesmer dumps on meditation guardian because there’s not enough consistent condition removal to remove the crap ton of weakness you get applied with, following the many conditions you get hit with. Necro on the other hand will and can eat you because one mass cleanse with a stunbreak on a 48-60s cd isn’t going to save you against the class’s kitten nal of abilities

There’s a double use for CoP. You can either use it when you get CC’d at the beginning in hope to get out of the initial spiking(often ends bad ) or you save it for when you get those large stacks of bleed and a bar full of conditions. Using it just for stun break at a bad moment means you’re a dead guardian or SoL for the next 48-60s. Another thing too is you can’t gib necromancers that know what they are doing. Against necros that stand still and eat everything you have sure you’ll be able to gib them, but it’s pretty hard when you fight against a decent necromancer that doesn’t play like a up leveled it’s a very challenging fight(WvW wise, hi perplexity necro)

As for the blocks and blinds the only ones that are random are the kitten aegis proc from VoC and and the 5 point minor in valor that gives you aegis at 50% health on a 90s CD. The rest of the blocks are not random. The rest is entirely player activated and skill based.

I don’t say Guard is easy but it isn’t that harder than warrior and doesn’t require that amount of skill some people think – deal with it.

It certainly does require some skill with low health little to no access to protection unless you tweak your build and utilities, not to mention low mobility(no real swiftness unless you take staff)The effort between a warrior and a guardian is noticeable when you play one.

Famous guardians as in youtubers and streamers? Truth is some of them are actually not as good as they seem. Youtubers most of the time if you’re taking it from videos it’s edited to winning fights so it shouldn’t be a surprise if you see them lose to other guardians etc.

To finish off things reread what I said, I said compare the heals of a meditation guardian to that of a shout warrior, they’re pretty much equivalent. Speaking of viability I do not see many Zerker guardians in solo queue Tpvp. Most of them are bunker support.

I have a Warrior I have played alot longer than my Guardian (but both maxed of course, ignoring ascended) but the strange this is… I have always felt like I performed better on the Guardian regardless of role in WvW (dont play either in PvE) and find it much more fun overall to play.

Not the Warrior isnt fun to play, its just not the same kind of fun.

Or maybe I am just enjoying my poledancing Asura way too much.

The fact that you don’t mention boon sharing at all really makes me think that you’re not cut out to play a GUARDian. Why not roll a warrior and stick to that?

* Most weapons are bad in comparison to other classes ( good weapons are GS and Scepter/Torch, Sword/Focus VS all Warrior weapons are good )

Did ya really leveled your guard in wvw were you see guard wearing almost only staff/hammer?

* Very slow class ( has only GS3 for mobility, Retreat and Save Yourselves are 60 sec CD vs Warrior GS 3, 5 Horn 5, Sword 2, Banner, Bullrush and other skills, Swiftness from traits )

Like someone said meditation guardian have one hell of a mobility. You also forgot Staff for guard mobility (must be because you don’t paly it)

* Guardian ABSOLUTELY REQUIRES traiting for less cooldown so you WASTE 1 or 2 traits for less CD.

I totaly disagree with that…

* Warriors can heal the same as Guardian

That’s what we should call : balance.

* Mobility again : makes you not take damage so youre a better tanker and you can ESCAPE FIGHTS that you would lose. If a Guardian is not going to win a fight, he is very likely NOT TO BE ABLE TO ESCAPE (unlike thief, mesmer, warrior)

Sadly there are none better a tanking then guards. There are just to many option for guards to survive. Be it blind spam, block skill, aegis, protection, heal on weapons skill… etc. Escape a fight : meditaion again.

Thats my perception on playing the classes. I feel Guardian is a subpar warrior in sPVP and WvW, I cant comment on PVE because Ive leveled from 2 to 80 on WvW.

How should i say it… You’re doing it wrong obviously. The only thing that is really imbalance on warrior would be this healing signet of them. Anet should really nerf base periodic heal and enhance healing power scalling… Sadly Anet hate healing power so this probably won’t happen.

Guardian staff swiftness = crap.
Unless you waste your upgrade slots for boon duration, which should bring it from 4 to 6 seconds, staff swiftness wont matter and wont let you escape nor catch other classes that are out of teleport range.
BUT other classes can catch you even if youre out of 1200 range.

About the staff heal?
Staff is so bad for roaming, it is only used for aoe might/small heal in WvW.
Guardian staff = i could care less.
I see myself being MUCH more useful with Scepter/Torch and Greatsword.

As a Warrior I can outrun ANYONE from the zerg or escape anyone in SPVP, including thieves and mesmers.
Horn 5, Sword 2, GS 5, GS 3, bullrush, Sword 2, GS 3…..wait a few more seconds for Horn 5 and start the cycle again.

Its not rocket Science :
Lower cooldown is better than higher cooldown
Higher health is better than lower health
More weapon choices is better than fewer weapon choices
Not needing to spend traits to fix things is better than having to spend traits to fix things
Many rushes and long jumps are better than 1 long jump
Low cooldown for swiftness with decent duration is better than medium cooldown for swiftness with short duration

warrior weapons :
Axe/Axe = it rocks, aoe, range, retaliation, cripple
Mace/Sword = so many blocks that a guardian can feel jealous, range, bleed
Mace/Shield = awesome
Mace/Mace = blocks, interrupts, so many good stuff
Sword/Sword = Has it all
Hammer = MOAB, aoe kb, FUMBLE!!! (-50% received damage : way better than crappy Protection), weakness (makes the other guy not being able to dodge, specially in fights that last more than a minute)
GS : awesome
Bow : Awesome in WvW
Rifle : Awesome in 1v1, cripple and bleed
Sword : bleed, long jump with 2 for escape and chase
Horn : swiftness

Guardian
Staff : mostly crap, only good thing is aoe might/heal, which lets you vulnerable.
Scepter : good, multihit with 2, paralysis with 3
Torch : by far the best damage weapon for guard, excellent pair for scepter, low cooldown (miracle?)
GS : The only mobility move and BAIL OUT for Guardian, high damage, number 5 pull has short range
sword : decent, teleport does not work without target, number 3 does good dmg
Focus : number 4 is crap and slow, number 5 has a nice block with HUUUGE cooldown
Mace : protection is bad in comparison to FUMBLE, symbol is crap
Shield : pbaoe kb is decent, protection is bad in comparison to FUMBLE.
Hammer : crap. SINGLE target kb instead of aoe kb like warriors, number 3 paralysis is hard to land, autoattack last hit is ULTRA SLOW, number 2 has 300 range what is this a joke?, number 5 takes so long to draw the circle by the time it finishes the enemy has already escaped, not to mention the long cooldown.

This is not an ego fight guys, equally skilled players, the warrior will win.
Guardian can only kill bad players.

Everything a Guardian does, another class can do better.
Oh except traited ressurection of course.

They dont excel in anything, and they still are not Jack of all trades like warrior/ele/engi

If you think your Guardian is pale in comparison to a Warrior, I highly recommend a vacation to a sunny place. Get a tan, you’ll be as brown as a Warrior in no time!

Rasalhague.8270:

Everything a Guardian does, another class can do better.
Oh except traited ressurection of course.

They dont excel in anything, and they still are not Jack of all trades like warrior/ele/engi

Group stability? Aegis?

Jerus.4350:

Rasalhague.8270:

Everything a Guardian does, another class can do better.
Oh except traited ressurection of course.

They dont excel in anything, and they still are not Jack of all trades like warrior/ele/engi

Group stability? Aegis?

Walls? I’d take a guard on Fire Shaman in fractals over warrior/ele/engi. While swirling winds is nice, and engi has an RNG wall, guard reflects are great in PvE.

Jerus.4350:

Rasalhague.8270:

Everything a Guardian does, another class can do better.
Oh except traited ressurection of course.

They dont excel in anything, and they still are not Jack of all trades like warrior/ele/engi

Group stability? Aegis?

Stability….every 30 seconds (feated), when other classes can knockback and pull you every 5 seconds.

Aegis 80 seconds cooldown from virtue, 60 seconds cooldown from retreat which will take the slot of other important skill….Aegis wont save you.

Rasalhague.8270:

Jerus.4350:

Rasalhague.8270:

Everything a Guardian does, another class can do better.
Oh except traited ressurection of course.

They dont excel in anything, and they still are not Jack of all trades like warrior/ele/engi

Group stability? Aegis?

Stability….every 30 seconds (feated), when other classes can knockback and pull you every 5 seconds.

Aegis 80 seconds cooldown from virtue, 60 seconds cooldown from retreat which will take the slot of other important skill….Aegis wont save you.

No profession has a pull every 5 seconds.
You as guardian with a standard meditation build have

3 ways to remove conditions
4 blinds
3 blocks
1 ranged projectile destroyer
1 invul
2 leaps and a teleport
2k heal every 16 seconds
1 pull
Group Buffs

and the next highest damage in game per rotation.

The only thing you can’t do is run fast.
There is a reason people have more than 1 bunker gaurdian on ToL teams.
and a reason why teams without guardians lost.

You may want to check into what the guardian does well, and try it, before coming and crying about nothing.

Guardians are viable if not necessary in every aspect of the game for group play.

End discussion.

SYG is 24s traited, 30s without.

Honestly, as far as I’m concerned Guardians are pretty great. They may not be the best in 1v1 situations, but a meditation build is pretty powerful, but where was truly shine is group play, makes sense being GUARDians. My only problem with the profession is spirit weapons being pretty /meh, and then a lot of trait lines being /meh as well. I feel as if there aren’t as many options for diversity as my ele or warrior.

Personally I hate my warrior though, so bland and boring, just strait raw power, nothing fun. But, it sounds like that’s the profession you want, so why not play that instead of trying to turn the guardian into a copy of it?

Lucentfir.7430:

@Dominik
Runes are personal choice and flame legion runes are a decent choice to mix with Fiery Wrath but if you don’t want to be ran away from easily during a fight from a class with decent swiftness up time or 25% movement signet/trait you’ll want travelers runes to not feel like a turtle.
Skullcrack or hammer CC chain which I can dodge and follow up with a blind right after to avoid the next hit and get some hits in.
Over for mesmers and other classes you mean kind of like Mace+Shield/GS warrior, or a Eviscerate warrior? The only mesmers that get dunked by the burst of a guardian like that are absolute glass that don’t know it’s a DPS speced guardian. I know clone death hybrid/condi mesmer dumps on meditation guardian because there’s not enough consistent condition removal to remove the crap ton of weakness you get applied with, following the many conditions you get hit with.

well…. I talk about PvP… There is no need for traveller – there aren’t mace/ shild warriors and there aren’t hybrid condi mesmers.

And no you don’t have to dodge precisely compared to other classes. As Mesmer for example you are nearly dead if you get hit by pindown or sigent of spite. Guard doesn’t really care about it – at least he isn’t inmedantely a dead man. They are more fault-tolerant than a lot of other classes

Guards and wars are very different classes. Guards do better support and higher dps, wars do better faceroll. It’s comparing apples and oranges.

Is this another one of those threads where people compare Guardians to Warriors because the both have heavy armor, so logically, Guardians should be as good as warriors in every aspect of the game?

Why, yes it is.

Obtena.7952:

Is this another one of those threads where people compare Guardians to Warriors because the both have heavy armor, so logically, Guardians should be as good as warriors in every aspect of the game?

Why, yes it is.

Don’t forget how they ignore all of guardian strengths.

TyPin.9860:

I think that a well played Guardian is stronger and can offer more to a team than a well played Warrior. But that might only be my personal perception.

that is also a well known fact, not just your personal opinion.

for me, i can never get the timings right, so i play warrior and not guardian.

i can never play guardian properly.
but i do not complain about guardian.

i know guardian is very, very powerful when played correctly.
guardian also helps team fights more than warriors.

warrior is mainly about own’s survival while guardian is there to care for the team.

basicallly the idea here is that guardian’s defenses are active and need to be used and at a right time, wheras warriors are passive (huge hp pool, signet regen, trait regen) and thus warriors are easier to manage. Also guardian has to pay attention to party not just himself, while warrior is basically “drop down banner, hammer away”.

Rasalhague.8270:

Guardian staff swiftness = crap.
Unless you waste your upgrade slots for boon duration, which should bring it from 4 to 6 seconds, staff swiftness wont matter and wont let you escape nor catch other classes that are out of teleport range.
BUT other classes can catch you even if youre out of 1200 range.

About the staff heal?
Staff is so bad for roaming, it is only used for aoe might/small heal in WvW.
Guardian staff = i could care less.
I see myself being MUCH more useful with Scepter/Torch and Greatsword.

As a Warrior I can outrun ANYONE from the zerg or escape anyone in SPVP, including thieves and mesmers.
Horn 5, Sword 2, GS 5, GS 3, bullrush, Sword 2, GS 3…..wait a few more seconds for Horn 5 and start the cycle again.

Its not rocket Science :
Lower cooldown is better than higher cooldown
Higher health is better than lower health
More weapon choices is better than fewer weapon choices
Not needing to spend traits to fix things is better than having to spend traits to fix things
Many rushes and long jumps are better than 1 long jump
Low cooldown for swiftness with decent duration is better than medium cooldown for swiftness with short duration

warrior weapons :
Axe/Axe = it rocks, aoe, range, retaliation, cripple
Mace/Sword = so many blocks that a guardian can feel jealous, range, bleed
Mace/Shield = awesome
Mace/Mace = blocks, interrupts, so many good stuff
Sword/Sword = Has it all
Hammer = MOAB, aoe kb, FUMBLE!!! (-50% received damage : way better than crappy Protection), weakness (makes the other guy not being able to dodge, specially in fights that last more than a minute)
GS : awesome
Bow : Awesome in WvW
Rifle : Awesome in 1v1, cripple and bleed
Sword : bleed, long jump with 2 for escape and chase
Horn : swiftness

Guardian
Staff : mostly crap, only good thing is aoe might/heal, which lets you vulnerable.
Scepter : good, multihit with 2, paralysis with 3
Torch : by far the best damage weapon for guard, excellent pair for scepter, low cooldown (miracle?)
GS : The only mobility move and BAIL OUT for Guardian, high damage, number 5 pull has short range
sword : decent, teleport does not work without target, number 3 does good dmg
Focus : number 4 is crap and slow, number 5 has a nice block with HUUUGE cooldown
Mace : protection is bad in comparison to FUMBLE, symbol is crap
Shield : pbaoe kb is decent, protection is bad in comparison to FUMBLE.
Hammer : crap. SINGLE target kb instead of aoe kb like warriors, number 3 paralysis is hard to land, autoattack last hit is ULTRA SLOW, number 2 has 300 range what is this a joke?, number 5 takes so long to draw the circle by the time it finishes the enemy has already escaped, not to mention the long cooldown.

This is not an ego fight guys, equally skilled players, the warrior will win.
Guardian can only kill bad players.

Ouch.

You think maybe Arenanet will offer an item in the Gem Store that will allow people to change their class to Warrior? I would imagine they would make a tidy sum from it.

Thanks.